Letters from a friend
by tampoposensei
Summary: Not real fiction just me having a bit of fun. Letters originally written by Iruka and collected by Naruto. Mostly fluff. OK maybe some angsty bits too. Yaoi KakaIru but not too explicit. No real spoilers but vague references to events before the time skip
1. Chapter 1

As ever, none of the characters mentioned or not mentioned belong to me in any way. Be very glad.

Intro.

As the late Sixth Hokage, Uzumaki Naruto's effects were being removed from his retirement home, a stack of papers were found shoved under the leg of the kitchen table to stop it from wobbling. Closer examination revealed them to be letters, although no one knows who wrote them, or to whom they were sent. Presumably the 'Kakasi' frequently referred to is the famous Sharingan Hatake Kakashi, but there was no one in any of the village records of any importance called Iruka. Historians are still pouring over them, but admit that we may never know.

* * *

Hey there, 

Hope this finds you as safe as it leaves me. Everything is still very tense around here. Snake breath has been beaten back for now but there's a lingering sense of danger from all sides, so everyone is still pretty jumpy. Well everyone except Kakashi, now that he's finally came back to me, exhausted and weak as a kitten. But I'm starting to get used to that.

Two weeks later he claims that he still doesn't have the energy to get out of bed before noon (although he has no trouble pulling me in with him). Between you and me I think he's faking at least half of it. True he is still flashing back to Itachi's eye jutsu once in a while. I can tell because he puts his hand over his eye and gets very pale and shaky. Well paler anyway. When I ask what's wrong he just shakes his head and says he's fine, so I know he's lying. When he wilts elegantly on the couch and starts talking all whispery and croaky and asks if he can rest his head on my lap, then I know it's okay to go out and leave him on his own all day.

I think I've finally worked out what makes these jounins so crazy, it's all the time they spend in each other's company. I swear I can feel a few more of my brain cells committing suicide each time I try to start up a conversation with him. All I asked for was some advice in evacuating the kids more efficiently, since he's a bit older, and a lot more experienced, and this genius of strategy and everything. He just laughed and said they'd be fine. Then he asked if I knew we were almost out of milk?

WTF? Almost out of milk! The tragedy! How could the poor dear possibly get through the day? I could feel the tears of sorrow starting to prickle at the back of my little eyeballs. Here I am worrying about protecting a school full of mininins, spoiling for the chance to put into practice everything they've been learning for the past few years and rip the enemies throats out, when my poor darling might run out of milk.

I pointed out as sweetly as I could, while cramming the veins back into my forehead, that if the worst came to it he might just have to consider drinking water with his cookies.

Then the damn brat had the nerve to say that he was relieved that at least he didn't have all those kids to worry about anymore. ALLTHOSE KIDS! He had a team of three, count them, one two three. We lost several good teachers during the attack, and there are still quite a few out on medical leave, and trust me, I know I'm lucky to have got off as easily as I did. But still, the net result is that classes are doubled up, tripled for some of us more experienced teachers. I had fifty seven kids squeezed into my classroom today. Fifty seven and he's still whining about how hard it was to teach three!

At least he had the decency to blush when he realized who he was complaining to. So he said I looked really tired and that I was overdoing it, and that some air would do him good. So he dragged himself of the couch and went out to the market to get milk.

Well of course he had a flashback and passed out in the dairy aisle. I know because twenty minutes later, just as I had started to relax a bit with the help of a glass of wine, there was a knock at the door. Gai stood there with my life's partner draped over his shoulder like an oversized fashion accessory. Luckily he'd been in the market and seen him go down, and knows the situation well enough to bring him back here rather than take him to the hospital. Otherwise I'd be riddled with even more guilt than I am now.

So I begged Gai to stay with him while I trekked all the way across town to get his favourite organic unpasturised milk from the health food store. I know it's just his imagination but he swears he can taste the difference.

Gai left a little while ago and I'm writing this while waiting for Kakashi to come around so I can serve him a glass of warm milk and a bathtubful of contrition.

Yours, counting my blessings and then some,

Iruka.


	2. Chapter 2

Hey Old Friend,

Well today Kakashi got sent off on his first mission since 'the incident'. A solo, deep secret, and no doubt very dangerous mission. He spent half an hour with the new boss going over the details, the first time he's seen her whilst in a fully conscious state. And she must be quite something to look at. It took me twice that long to get his eye to stay in his head afterwards. The other one was probably spinning fast enough to drill right through his headband.

All the while he was trying to persuade me about the pleasures of groping breasts, and asking whether I've ever wondered what it's like to have sex with a man and a woman at the same time. Natch I assured him that I have less than zero curiosity in that direction, and that unless he wants to become way too familiar with sleeping on the couch for the foreseeable future, he'd better crank his curiosity down a couple of dozen notches too. I swear the man reads way too much porn.

The threat worked. He was very quiet for a while, then promised that he didn't really mean it, that I'm the only one for him and that he was just trying to understand my deepest desires a little better. The damn liar. Mind, from what I've heard of our new leader, it's just as well he didn't suggest anything to her. She flattened Naruto with one finger, and even the legendary Jiraiya has a healthy fear of her power. I've probably saved his life.

Whether it was from the images still floating in his head, or from the sudden realization that the domestic bliss of regular nookie was coming to an abrupt end, he spent the next couple of hours making good on his promise and proving just how much he appreciates my body. I don't know how he managed to walk out of the door afterwards. I know I can't.

So now he's gone, leaving me with a gaping hole in my heart that won't be filled until he comes back in one piece.

Yours, left hugging my lonely pillow,

Iruka.


	3. Chapter 3

Hey there,

Kakashi's been gone for a week now, and I swear if one more person asks how I'm holding up I'll break their figgin neck so fast that I'll instantly be promoted to jounin. I mean, we both know that I lived on my own for many many years. I'm good at living on my own. I like coming home to an apartment that isn't littered with dirty plates and teacups, and getting up each morning to a bathroom that's not knee deep in wet towels.

It's downright refreshing to be able to get dressed and stay dressed the first time, without hands all over me tugging my pants down and my shirt off and a deep breathy voice in my ear out of nowhere telling me that if I wander into MY OWN BEDROOM, with my clothes unbuttoned, I'm obviously just asking for it.

I've actually been getting to the academy early, the way I used to. Instead of rushing in with wet hair just a few minutes before the kids start to arrive. That's given me the chance to finally get everything there back into some kind of order. I've also been able to rewrite my lesson plans to include a section on sonic attacks. And demon vessels too, Gaara's showing at the chuunin exam has given me the opportunity, without the risk of crossing into forbidden territory.

So before you ask, I'm fine, just fine.

Shit who am I kidding? Not you I know, nor myself, no matter how hard I try. Kakashi just isn't ready for a long mission yet. Physically he's as strong as ever. I know that better than anyone because I'm the one he's been testing his endurance on. But mentally he's still barely holding it together, a ship made from eggshell in a sea of icebergs. Why am I the only one who seems worried about the cracks?

I tried telling Sakura-chan, hoping that she'd take the hint and pass it on, but she laughed so hard I thought she's pee herself. She told me that mental stability was not a concept I should try applying to her sensei, that his levels of paranoia and deviance transcend any understanding of anything that would reasonably be considered stable in any normal human being. Then she shrugged and kissed me on the cheek. Just when did she grow up so much? And what kind of books does her new mentor have her reading that have so many fancy words? Still, I can't help feeling that she knows something that I don't.

I'm thinking of offering to help out in the mission room again, I need something to fill up my evenings, and without Kakashi around I could use a little time with 'the grown ups'. I'm just not sure I can stand everyone there hovering over me, waiting for me to have a total meltdown the embarrassingly messy way I did last time he was brought back in a coma. But really, who could blame me? You should have seen him, anyone would have thought he was dead.

Speaking of watchers over, Genma and Gai, the needle sucker and the beautiful beast, keep stopping by at random times. I know Kakashi must have asked them to keep an eye on me, as if I was the one just jutsued into hell and back. so what can I do but ask them in and offer them tea? Then sit quietly and make small talk, while they discretely check me over for signs of losing it, as I glance meaningfully at my piles of ungraded papers hoping they'll get the message.

I know that hiding my innermost feelings has never exactly been my strong point, but dammit, surely I'm not that far gone. Although, come to think of it, I must have been almost certifiably crazy to have taken up with the man in the first place, so perhaps they have a point.

There's a full moon tonight. I think I'll go out and howl to it for a couple of hours.

Yours, edging towards lunacy, whilst enjoying my freedom and chewing my fingernails down to the bone.

Iruka.


	4. Chapter 4

Well hello again,

As it turned out I didn't have to worry about whether to volunteer for mission room duties after all. Kotetsu and Izumo took it upon themselves to sign me up for shifts every evening to the end of the month. They said it's to teach me the true art of dignified slacking off. But really they're just keeping tabs. I was pretty pissed off at their interfering at first, but now that I've had time to cool down a bit I'm glad. It is nice to be around people my own age and the pair of them are a lot of fun, maybe too much. As for slacking off, I'm afraid I don't have much talent in that direction. I'm going use the time to reorganize all the old files that got dumped in the back room when the old archives were damaged in the attack.

I've run into the new boss a couple of times in passing, and I can see why she got Kakashi so hot and bothered. I haven't seen so much exposed tit since you and I got drunk that time when we were kids and you dragged me into the women's side of the bathhouse. Only here it's all on one woman.

One of the chuunin teachers brought in her new baby yesterday, as a morale booster since we've lost so many people recently. Tsunade made sweet clucking noises and asked to hold it, as I suppose any woman would. Well the kid must have thought all its prayers had been answered at once. Its little eyes glazed over the way Kakashi's did that day he came home with a new Icha Icha book and found I'd cooked all his favourites for dinner.

Same thought going through both adorable little heads I suppose, big breasts, good food. Anyway, the poor little mite started mouthing all up and down her cleavage trying to find a nipple to latch onto, sucking harder and harder the more frustrated he got. Tsunade started shrieking, and yelling 'get it off me get it off me,' and the poor mother just stood there mortified.

Fortunately Genma came in right then and was able to wiggle his senbon in under the kid's lips to break the suction. From the look on Tsunade's face I wouldn't be surprised if he didn't take advantage of the situation to cop a feel for himself at the same time, but from where I was standing I couldn't swear to it. Anyways Tsunade didn't hang around after that but hurried away to sponge the baby slobber off her chest. Honestly, you'd think the famous slug sannin would be able to cope with a bit of slime.

As soon as she was safely out of the way, and mother and babe had fled the scene, Kotetsu and Izumo decided to reenact the whole show. Except that Kotetsu did manage to find Izumo's nipple and they were obviously enjoying it far too much to be decent in a halfway public place.

I can tell you that keeping a straight face and a dignified shinobi expression was harder to endure than anything Torture and Interrogation ever thought up, even with its current leadership. It took me all night and half the morning to unlock the frozen muscles in my face. On the up side, the kids at school have never been better behaved or more respectful. One look at my rigid features and they fell right into line. Perhaps I should try it more often, stone-face no jutsu?

So, all in all things are both better and worse than you might think. It's almost three weeks since Kakashi left. The mission came directly from the new hokage, so I don't know any of the details. But it doesn't take a genius to have noticed that only the most dangerous missions last longer than a week, and that even they don't usually go past two unless something has gone horribly wrong. On the other hand life goes on. It's amazing what we can get used to. Living in a state of permanent dread, hope and denial has almost started to seem normal.

Today Kotetsu and Izumo are back in respectable chuunin mode, waiting patiently behind the desk like the stuffed shirt civil servants they're supposed to be, so I'm going to tackle those files.

Yours, with sleeves rolled up and ready to keep busy and out of trouble,

Iruka.

A/N I originally wrote the scene with the baby for Princess Poppy, when Kakashi first takes her to see Tsunade, but it didn't quite fit. So I recycled it for this :)


	5. Chapter 5

Hey there Bud,

Thanks for the 'postcard from hell'. I always love your little snippets on family life, just to let me know what I'm not missing. Sorry I've been so long writing back, things have been particularly hectic. I had to take back to back missions myself last week, even though we're still short of teachers. They had gennins subbing in half the classrooms. At least I didn't get Naruto assigned to mine, if I'd thought I might come back to a roomful of sexy no jutsus I might have thought better of it and just gone missing permanently. Except… I'd have missed Kakashi's triumphant return. Yes, he's back… finally.

I was in the mission room, trying to stay awake while I graded through all the work the kids had done with their sub, when an all too familiar presence darkened the doorway. My head snapped up just in time to see Kakashi hovering in front of me, grinning like a fool through that stupid mask, and positively reeking of… soap. Not just any soap mind, the really expensive handmade herbal stuff. And as if that wasn't enough of a giveaway, he then proceeded to plonk a box on the desk. A box of delicacies, the kind they sell as souvenirs at the really fancy hot springs up north. Obviously he hadn't been on a real mission at all. Seems the old lady had found out about the incident at the grocery store and sent him away to a spa for a whole month to recuperate. No wonder the rest of us are running ragged.

As you can imagine my poor mind was on total overload, I was so furious, and so relieved, that I didn't know whether to kiss him to death or just kill him. Force of habit I suppose, but I stopped long enough to give him a quick visual once over, just to make absolutely sure all the major parts were still there. And were they ever. He looked better than I'd ever seen him, and that's saying something. Covered in mud gore and grime the man still looks like a gift from heaven, and right then he was positively glowing. He was toned, massaged, groomed. They'd even managed to do something with his hair (that lasted all of an hour and a half). He looked like a goddam god. Breathless nothing, I wanted him so bad I was aching in places where I didn't know I had places.

It must have been a bit more than obvious because Genma, who was on duty with me, snickered so hard that he lost control of his senbon and nearly stabbed himself in the foot when he dropped it. But he's a good friend. He waved us off, said that he could handle things from there, and that we should have one on him. Kakashi thanked him and asked if he wanted pictures, so I grabbed him by the ear and hauled his arse just far enough out of the door to be able to give him a proper welcome-back kiss. He must have had the same thing on his mind because my toes still haven't uncurled yet.

I won't…um, bore you with any of the finer details, but yes, life is good again.

Yours, walking on air, if a bit awkwardly,

Iruka.


	6. Chapter 6

Dear confidant,

Sounds posh doesn't it? But you are really the only one in the world I can share this with. BTW I'm glad to hear that the butt plug worked and that Mr. Pinkie is over his 'little problem' and won't have to be turned into bacon after all. And yes it was Kakashi's idea, seems he once had a conversation with a guy who's job is masturbating boars to collect semen to artificially inseminate sows. He said that a well placed thumb could speed up the process no end. One of the many advantages of being sent out on so many missions I suppose, you get to meet wise and knowledgeable people in all walks of life.

But that's not what I need to tell you about. Kakashi has written a book, or at least a manuscript. I found it hidden under some mail order shuriken catalogues tucked under the couch when I was cleaning. I had wondered what he had been doing to fill up his time at that spa, even he can only do so much lazing around. Naturally I thought it was Jiraiya's at first, and that he'd given it to Kakashi to look over. But it isn't like a typical Icha Icha at all, and of course I know the handwriting.

He's modestly called it 'Hentai for Heroes', or 'The Prodigal's Guide to Perversion'. I only had time to look over the first chapter. And there isn't one gender specific pronoun in the whole thing. I didn't get very far because I heard him coming back from training with Gai, which was lucky for me, he's a sneaky brat and would have caught me if he was alone. But anyone can hear Gai coming, and it gave me time to shove it under some old essays I've saved at the bottom of my weapons drawer. But I can tell you it was far enough. I had to grab some dumbbells and pretend that I'd been exercising to give me an excuse for my red face and pounding heart.

So please, if you value my sanity at all, I desperately need advice. What the hell do I do now? He's bound to look for it sooner or later, should I just burn the wretched piece of trash the first chance I get, or confront him with it? I can't, can't let him publish that thing. As you know the two of us aren't exactly the best kept secret in town so everyone would know who he's been doing these… these things… with. Having all those… details… in black and white, I would die. I would never be able to look a parent in the eye again. And what if one of the kids got hold of a copy? For the past few weeks having him away was the most awful thing I could imagine, and now suddenly having him home is worse.

Yours, twisting slowly in the wind like the last leaf of autumn,

Iruka.


	7. Chapter 7

Dear Partner in Crime,

No doubt you already noticed the enclosed copy of 'A Prodigy's Guide to Perversion'. Hard to miss since this letter is in the same fat envelope. And I'll remind you once again that it's strictly for your eyes only. I mean it, if I find you've breathed a word to a single living soul I will track you down like a dog. I know it's wicked funny, I've read through the wretched thing a dozen or more times already, and I know you'll want to share, hell I'm sending it to you. But seriously, it ends here.

Kakashi seems to have given up looking for the original. Which probably means that he's already found it, knows damn well that I have it, and has decided that discretion is the better part of cowardice. Or the part that's least likely to have a negative impact on his sex life. So right now we're at an impasse, both pretending that it doesn't exist, and waiting to see who caves first.

Other news, everything is slowly getting back to normal. Tsunade seems to be a surprisingly efficient and effective leader, in her own rather unique brittle way. It was a shock at first, I've lived almost my whole life under Sarutobi-sama, and he was such a sweet old softie. Anyone would seem a right bone-cruncher by comparison I suppose. So yeah, It's good to get rid of that vacuum at the top

Here's something different, we're being sent out on a mission together, Kakashi and me. It's fairly basic stuff, retrieving a shinobi who went off his head and ran away into the hills after his team mate was gutted in front of him. Apparently he was all but engaged to the girl who died, and after everything we've all been through recently, it sent him right over the edge. Kakashi's being sent because the kid has some serious skills, and they want me to tag along to talk him down, he was a student of mine a few years back and we still have a pretty good connection.

But here's the kicker. She'd just finished explaining all this and was handing the scroll over to Kakashi when Tsunade muttered, 'I swear I'll never send another couple who are emotionally involved on the same mission ever again.

Ok, so Kakashi didn't actually _say_ anything. All he did was raise that eyebrow of his, but I swear, the way he did it. Honestly, he might just as well have come out and said, 'you are aware Hokage-sama that the two of us live together. And that I and fuck this man senseless every night I'm in Konoha, except when he's so horny that he nails me first, that is'.

She went very quiet, and very still, then she looked from him to me and back again. I thought I would die, or spontaneously combust, every red blood cell in my body did an end run to my face. Finally she just stared at him and said, "I would hardly apply that rule to you Hatake-san, I am well aware that you are far beyond such small considerations."

Fortunately Kakashi dragged me out of the room before I could slug her, or try to. I know her reputation. It took tea _and_ sake to calm me down. Just who did she think she was calling a small consideration? But what really did it was Kakashi's sweet talking, promising nights under the stars, rolled in one blanket. Eventually he was able to persuade me that Tsunade only meant that she had confidence in his professionalism, that she knew how he cared about all his team mates, and that any other issues were small by comparison.

Once I had a bit of perspective I realized that whatever her misguided thinking, as long as the old buzzard was letting us go together, I didn't care. So here I am packing for the closest thing to a romantic getaway we'll ever have. Maybe I'll forget to take underwear, or even better, arrange it so that Kakashi forgets to take his.

Yours, eagerly anticipating 'playing ninja' and getting my man,

Iruka.


	8. Chapter 8

Dear closest dearest and most treasured friend,

Yes I admit it, I want something. I'd better not lean to close to the paper or it might catch fire, that's how much I'm blushing just writing this.

Well here goes, you remember chapter five in the 'Prodigy's Guide'? When Kakashi describes the sweet mild mannered teacher getting home from the girl's boarding school where he/she works, and changing into _that outfit_? Well, you see, I've decided I want to get one just like it. I know, I know. I shouldn't pander to his ridiculous adolescent fantasies… But. He does so much for me, for all of us, and hell it is only an outfit. And although the worst torturer in Hidden Mist couldn't drag this from me, I sort of kind of like the idea.

Now before you gag up your cookies… you've read it. What the debonair silver haired spy does after he sees the teacher all got up, as he is climbing up the wall of the building opposite? Don't bother trying to denying it, I know you too well. And I know that I've read it so many times that I'm surprised I haven't worn the words off the manuscript. It sends shivers up my spine just thinking about it. And with Valentine's Day coming up and all…

The thing is there's no way in the world I can just go and buy something like that, not in Konoha. And where else could I go? Even if I did get permission to take a trip to somewhere else, Suna say, there are people who know me there too. That's one of the definite minuses of being 'associated' with someone famous. People notice what I'm doing. And when the famous someone is a famous pervert, well, need I say more?

So please please, could you? Would you? You're free to go pretty much anywhere. And if you said you where getting it for a friend everyone would believe you, no questions asked.

I have another motive too, a more devious one. You see we just got back from our joint mission, and yes it was successful, and it was great. But it was an eye opener too. You see here, in Konoha, Kakashi gets hit on by his share of women and a few men too, naturally enough. But everyone who knows about us knows, and even those who don't, know enough about him not try anything too pushy. But once we were out of the immediate area of the village it was like pow…open season. All anyone out there knew was what their eyes were telling them. That this was the hottest hunk of man to shuffle its pert and perfect arse through their home-sweet-home in a looong time.

Kakashi handled it all very professionally. Flirting, teasing and leading on anyone who had the slightest chance of being able to deliver useful information, then ditching them with so much charm that they could only offer grateful thanks from the bottom of their aching hearts.

All I could do was stand well back and watch slack-jawed. Of course no one paid much attention to me, the dull chuunin companion anyway, except for a few pleas to pass on mush notes. And that's when it hit me like a ton of bricks. Kakaashi spends a _lot _of time on missions, and a fair bit of that must be in situations like this, and… I'm not there, slack-jawed or otherwise. It's gotta be a temptation, all that love, not to mention the raw lust, being thrown in his direction. What can I do to tempt him home but remind him that I love him more than every other love-sick fool in the rest of the world put together? And if that means fuelling his fantasies a bit, then all I can say is on with the show.

There's no one else I can turn to, and trust me I've considered all of them. You know that you're like the sister I never had. That I can, and do, open my heart to you, tell you all my secrets. Well all my secrets that aren't classified anyway. And speaking of secrets, you do realize that this is the biggest secret of all time. You already have enough blackmail on me to make me your slave forever anyway, hell just the naked baby pics would do that.

Oh dear gotta go, looks like details on the big mission will have to wait. Someone is yelling for me to get the honourable grandson and Tsunade's pig down from Yondaime's nose. There's a bit of a prankster void around here since Naruto left, and the little brat is doing whatever he can to fill it.

Yours, practicing my sultry looks and heavy breathing,

Iruka.


	9. Chapter 9

A/N A lot of people have asked who these letters are written too. The truth is it doesn't really matter. I just wanted to have a bit of fun writing from Iruka's POV. As Hokage Naruto might have tried to collect stuff from his important people, especially Iruka-sensei and that would be a reason for them being all in one place. They're sort of based on the kind of letters my sisters and I write to each other. So just imagine that they are to someone really close that Iruka grew up with, almost like a sister. But who married and moved far away, as I did.

* * *

Dear beloved co-conspirator, 

With a lead in like that I hope this letter doesn't get randomly opened and inspected. I'd have a hell of a time trying to explain our little 'conspiracy' with a couple of masked ANBU breathing down my neck. So you'll do it! Thank you, thank you, thank you, and did I say thank you?

Now… as long promised, the goods on the mission. Oops, now it sounds even more suspicious doesn't it?

Anyways, I have to admit it didn't start well. For one thing it was raining, and not just cats and dogs either, more like cows and horses. We looked like drowned hens before we got through the gate. Anko called down and waved us through from her cosy little lookout, I didn't need a look at her face to be able to see the wicked grin plastered all over it. She really orta try loosening up a bit and work on her empathy. The tough as nails thing is all very well, but even she was a newbie once, and for most of us it was just a matter of luck or better training that we didn't try to bolt at one time or another

So we trudged through the mud, keeping to the shelter of the trees as much as we could, and made pretty good time under the circumstances. When it was clear that the clouds were getting darker because the sun had actually set, and not just because the storm was building up for one last attempt to wash us off the face of the planet, I started to scout around for a place to stop for the night. I was stringing a tarp over a nice little bank, sheltered from the wind by some particularly dense shrubs, and feeling pretty well pleased with myself for finding the one half-dry spot in the whole forest, when Kakashi appeared right in front of my face in that very annoying way jounins have. He put the back of his hand against my forehead as if he was checking for fever and asked what the hell I thought I was doing.

Naturally I was a bit defensive. I thought maybe he was expecting us to keep going through the night, so I muttered something about this being a good place to sleep. He looked at me, one eyed naturally, as if I was an exhibit at a freak show and said, "Why would anyone ANYONE sleep out in this filthy weather when there's a perfectly good village with a perfectly good inn just a mile up the road?"

He ripped down the tarp, stashed it away and I just stood there like an idiot. Now I know I shouldn't have felt miffed, but hell he can be such a damn condescending rodent. So I stuck my finger in his face and said, "But YOU promised me stars. I sleep under a roof with four walls every fucking night. This is supposed to be my fucking romantic fucking adventure." The creep had the nerve to keep smiling, even as he flashed through a few seals and grabbed my arm.

The next thing I knew we were standing on the scrubbed wooden floor of an old fashioned inn. The innkeeper must have known Kakashi pretty well because we were ushered upstairs at once, given dry yukatas, a bottle of warm sake, and a hot meal. Well who could stay angry? And Kakashi made good on his promise too, and then some. He gave me more than stars, Technicolor stars. It was the honeymoon we'll never have, and after that night, never need. I don't know how I got enough sleep for the sun to wake me, but it did. Kakashi was silhouetted against the flung open windows, surrounded by the light of the morning sun. Somehow it seemed as if it was filling the whole room, the whole world, with golden sparkles. The sky was blue, the birds were singing, and dammit if I didn't fall in love with the bastard all over again.

From then on everything was absurdly easy. I can't go into too many details, but after a couple of days of asking around we heard about a young man, matching our description, who had been taken in by the priest of a shrine at the top of a nearby mountain. I was all for going to get him before someone else made a move. But Kakashi said that we should wait, give him a few days to find his compass. I'll admit I had my doubts but he was the team leader.

As luck would have it there was a hot spring halfway up the mountain, close enough to keep tabs but far enough to keep our distance. It was just about impossible to reach without chakra, so it was completely natural and absolutely beautiful. We hung out and camped there for a while, bathing, training, making love under the stars, and just behaving like the love-sick fools we are. Eventually, when Kakashi felt the time was right, we went up to the shrine.

The priest had us wait in a courtyard while he went to fetch the kid. I had my big speech all memorized, about loyalty, honour, that we all suffer hardships and tragedy but they make us stronger in the end blah blah. But I was pretty nervous because we'd been warned that he had a particularly vicious blood limit jutsu and I'm rather attached to just about all of my body parts. After a few minutes he came shuffling out like a young bull, angry, frightened, uncertain.

He took one look at Kakashi and said, "Wow. They sent _you_ to get me?" He just winked and said, "Course. You're a Leaf ninja kid, one of Konoha's most valuable assets." Well the kid grinned almost wide enough to split his face in two. I know I complain a lot, and it can be The Mother Bitch of All Time to put up with the grief, the worry, the constant separation, and the porn, but I've never been more proud of Kakashi than I was at that moment.

So that's the story my dear. My big adventure. Now I'm back in the classroom, refreshed, inspired, reinvigorated, and fairly chomping at the bit to crank out new Leaf ninjas worth chasing halfway over the country for.

Yours, with stars in my eyes,

Iruka.


	10. Chapter 10

Dear Friend,

I hope my handwriting isn't too sloppy, you see I haven't been getting much sleep. And before you start getting perverted thoughts in your pretty little head, and laughing coffee out of your nose, no, not for a good reason. You see someone in our apartment building has a rooster. I expect they bought it as a pet when it was a cute fluffy little chick. You know how they sell them in the spring? Well by the laws of chance half of them have to be males, don't they?

Anyway, the damn thing wakes us up at first light every morning crowing its head off. I can't imagine who it thinks it's trying to impress, the nearest chicken must be miles away, but maybe that's why the damn thing is so determined to be so bloody loud. As soon as old sol starts peeping over the eastern horizon, it's cock-a-doodle-doo non stop.

Dealing with all the hyperactive little cherubs in my classes while I'm half asleep is bad enough, but living with a sleep deprived elite ninja is intolerable. For some reason as soon as he starts to get too drowsy he switches into automatic mission mode. He's almost iced me twice now when I've startled him.

Of course he apologises profusely. And the fussing and cuddling and kissing and, well everything that inevitably leads too, almost makes it worth it. But I'm a little nervous that if things get much worse he might not react fast enough to counteract his instincts and I won't be there to apologise to. You live on a farm, surely you have some suggestion on how to shut the blasted thing up, or at least delay its performance until some more Godly hour.

I have another problem interfering with my sleep too. Maybe I'm over reacting, I'm sure you'll tell me I am, and I'll put it down to my sleepless agitated state.

It started about five days ago, about the same time as our rooster problem, come to think of it. Well Kakashi had just come back with Sakura from a training session and he invited her in to have some iced lemonade, since they were hot and thirsty. And I was really pleased to see her again. She's the only one of his team still around, and even though she isn't officially his student any more, they still like to train together. They've been getting together once or twice a week when Kakashi hasn't been on missions, and I was glad, I thought it was really sweet.

So we had a really nice time chatting and catching up, then Kakashi walked her to the door and she put on her shoes and left. Well get this, as soon as she was gone he turned to me, all sweet smiles and misty eye, and said, "Have you ever noticed that Sakura has really pretty feet?"

As you can imagine I was gob smacked, WTF, pretty feet? I kind of turned around so he wouldn't see me gaping like a goldfish and mumbled something while I stumbled into the bedroom and shut the door. Then I took a really good long look at my bare feet. And to tell the truth I'd never realized quite how ugly they are, all long and bony with long thin toes and horrible knobby ankles. So I grabbed some socks to cover them up before he had a chance to compare. Naturally the top pair of socks in my drawer were really thick and fluffy, the ones I bought after the heating went out on us last January, and you know how hot it's been this summer.

Kakashi came in the bedroom, asking what was up, and of course he noticed, he notices everything. He asked if I had a chill and before I knew it I was bundled up on the couch under a fleece blanket sipping hot lemon and honey. All the while Kakashi ranting about summer colds being the very worst kind, about the germy kids I have breathing all over me everyday, and how he doesn't know how anyone is expected to stay healthy what with their constant coughing and snotty runny little noses.

Anyways, after a few minutes I was so hot and sweaty that I looked as if I really did have a fever, so Kakashi insisted I keep covered up in extra blankets all night. As a result I was much too uncomfortable to sleep, but too embarrassed to explain. So I tossed and turned and suffered all night long, then at 4AM our little feathered neighbourhood alarm clock started sounding off.

I absolutely insisted on going to work the next day, even though Kakashi threatened to go to Tsunade and tell her that I needed to be home resting. Disguising my guilt as righteous indignation I reminded him that I have important things to teach right now, this is my special duty to my village, and that I happen to have reliable information that he has been known to complete missions, in the not too distant past, in much worse shape than a little head cold.

Well he grumped and scowled and said, "Just don't overdo it, drink lots of fluids and if you need me I'll be out in the training field near the monument with Sakura."

Ok that took the wind right out of my puffed up sail and I've been fretting over it ever since. Is she a rival? Does Kakashi think the rest of her is as pretty as her feet? I know they say that beauty is only skin deep, but really, how deep do you want it to be? Personally I can't find it in me to give a hoot if she has the most spectacular pair of kidneys and the most lustrous liver in all Konoha. It's the bits Kakashi's going to be looking at all day that worry me.

That creamy skin flushed with healthy exercise, while mine is getting sallow from being indoors and clogged with chalk dust. Her spectacular pink hair and vibrant green eyes, while mine are both dull ordinary brown. Her breasts aren't big but they are very pert and pointy, and that's not exactly an area I can compete in at all is it? If I was a woman I could go and get a makeover and buy some sexy undies. No, before you even think of it, don't go there. But maybe the outfit you're getting will help. Have you managed to track down those last few items yet? At first I just wanted to get it as a laugh, but suddenly it seems as if it's all getting very serious.

Yours, very insecure and sleepless in Konoha,

Iruka.


	11. Chapter 11

Hey again,

Thanks for little chemical castration pellets you sent with your last letter. So that's how you farm folk shut up your roosters and get some sleep. The advice on using diet to reduce their testosterone levels was good too. I'm not sure where I'd be able to find bettle nuts around here, but the yams should be doable. Not that I ever managed to track down exactly where the crowing was coming from, you see it was never making any noise when I had time to start looking for it. You'll notice I said was, because I've a pretty good suspicion the whole problem has… disappeared.

Let me start at the beginning, or as close as I can get in this tangled mess. Three days ago I had just about had it with that damn bird waking us up. I was reduced to drinking so much coffee just to stay functional during the day that there must have been more caffeine than blood in my bloodstream, and I still couldn't keep my eyes open. Obviously I looked as bad as I felt because I was on mission desk duty with Genma, when he casually breezed in, sat on his chair, and said, "Geez what the hell's wrong with you? You look like shit."

He always was the subtle one, but I couldn't disagree. So I explained.

I suppose if my mind had been less of a fog I would have phrased it better, but I said, "Well, you see, I keep getting woken up by this damn annoying cock first thing every morning."

Unfortunately Genma not only fell off his chair, but he hit his head on the corner of the desk pretty hard on the way down, and almost swallowed his senbon. And I did mention that my sleep-deprived brain wasn't working too well didn't I? And who knows what God awful toxins he's dipped those things in over the years? Anyways, I immediately ripped off his shirt and crouched over his sprawled body with my head on his chest desperately trying to hear a heartbeat, with by fingers down his throat fishing for his needle.

And that's how Kakashi found us.

He'd just come from seeing Tsunade about his new mission and he appeared, looming over us on the floor behind the mission desk. Genma was half naked, eyes closed, moaning gently, and I was lying on top of him with my fingers in his mouth, muttering little prayers incoherently and looking for all the world as if I was just about to do him. Naturally Kakashi had him by the throat and slammed against the wall in an instant. I was so relieved that I'd managed to extract his damn senbon, and Kakashi was so blinded by fury, that it took at least two more minutes for either of us to notice that Genma was still unconscious.

His reflexes being what they are right now, Kakashi assumed he must have half killed him, so he started panicking and apologising. And I was yelling and cursing at him that it wasn't what it looked like, that Genma had hit his head and that it was all the damn roosters fault. Well enough of something got through for Kakashi to let go. Then he swept everything off the desk with a little wind jutsu, so that he could stretch Genma out on it and check his vitals, while I scouted around for the alcohol we were both sure Tsunade must have hidden in there somewhere, so we could work on trying to revive him with it.

And that's how the Green Beast found us.

He came bounding in, like the first sunshiny day of spring, to hand in a mission report from his team. And… as soon as he saw Genma laid out like a corpse at a wake, he burst into manly tears wailing about the prime of Konoha being cut down unkindly in the springtime of its youth. The racket must have woken Genma, because he promptly came around, rubbed the bump on his head and started roaring with laughter. And frayed as our nerves were, that was enough to set both of us off again.

And that's how Raidou found us.

He'd just got back from a mission and was there to check in with his ever-loving, and probably to join him in a little welcome-home make out session in the back room, if we weren't too busy. He found him rolling on the mission room desk laughing hysterically, the green beast Gai in the middle of the room sobbing hysterically, Kakashi behind the desk ranting hysterically and me just hysterical.

Luckily just about then I located a few bottles of sake stashed behind the fire extinguisher. So we passed them round until we were all sufficiently calmed down to breathe again. Naturally Kakashi was the first to get back to his annoyingly calm controlled self. He offhandedly announced that he had to go away for a couple of days prepping for his big mission, and that he was going to cook us all a splendid meal first, and that everyone was invited.

Then he fuffed away, leaving the whole place in chaos.

There were papers, scrolls, files, empty sake bottles, shredded pieces of Genma's shirt, and a sprinkling of green leaves from Kakashi's jutsu, everywhere. An hour later we'd just about got the place straightened out when our first client came in. Except it wasn't someone requesting a mission exactly, it was a tearful little girl asking if we would post a flier about a missing pet rooster. Apparently she'd had it since it was a fluffy little chick. She'd just got back from a playdate to find it gone and her family was hurrying to track it down before it got too far away

Ok, I'll admit that I took the time to carefully note that her address was in OUR building, and that secretly in my wicked heart of hearts I couldn't help hoping that it was THE rooster, and that it had flown far far away. But I didn't have time to dwell on it because about that time we started to get quite busy. By the time our shift was over Genma and I were both tired and looking forward to a good meal, of course I was already tired as hell, but I've already said that haven't I?

It was a good meal too, absolutely delicious. That man can really cook when he puts his genius mind to it. There was one dish I couldn't get enough of, some kind of tender meat in red wine. Good food, good company, and a bottle of very good French burgundy, we went to bed still dead tired but happy. And get this, we slept until nearly eight thirty the next day. No cock-a-doodle-dos, nothing, not a peep. I had to throw on my clothes and dash to school without breakfast just to get there on time. Fortunately I'd had enough of a feast the night before that it didn't matter.

Kakashi stopped by at lunchtime with some leftovers for me, and even cold they were still delicious. Around a mouthful of the stuff in rich wine sauce I asked him what it was. I should have been tipped off by the way he didn't quite meet my eye, but he said, "Nothing special, just chicken. Well, see you in two days." And then he was gone.

Now I may not be a genius, but I can put one and one and one together, lost pet plus chicken dinner plus silent sunrise. So when I got home I checked in the trash and as I suspected it was full of feathers. I may not have been able to track down the wretched bird but you can bet Kakashi could, in about a minute. The bastard had topped the little girl's pet rooster and served it for dinner to our guests.

So… I can't quite decide if this counts as a happy ending or not. But at least I'm caught up on my sleep now.

Yours, currently thinking evil thoughts about those castration pellets,

Iruka.


	12. Chapter 12

Whoa Speedy,

My mother warned me about fast women. No really, you didn't have to ship the package Fed-Ex, but thank you, I am glad I got it before Kakashi has to leave again.

I found your little note tucked inside too. And, come to think of it, I did blame the poor lamented (but not very) late rooster for the compromising situation Kakashi found me and Genma in. Which probably does explain why Kakashi took such prompt and severe revenge. And no, I wasn't really planning on putting those pellets in his tea. After all, I'd be the one to suffer at least as much as he would from a sudden loss of his libido. And if this mission is as serious as I think it might be, I probably won't be getting any for quite a while as it is. Maybe I should save them for myself.

But now I have other, even more desperate, problems. I was a bit late leaving for the academy this morning. Your box had just arrived and I was stashing it next to Kakashi's manuscript in my weapons drawer, when there was a knock at the front door. I opened it to find Sakura-chan… looking very uncomfortable I might add. Naturally I invited her in, but she just stood there staring at me as if I was the last person she had expected to see, in my own home, and said, "Is Kakashi-sensei around?"

So I said. "No." If Kakashi hadn't told her anything then it was hardly my place to try and explain was it? She stared at her feet for a moment, and I must admit they are rather pretty feet. Or at least the toes peeping out of her sandals were. Pretty little pink toes with nicely trimmed toenails painted in a very complimentary shade of rose that matched her hair perfectly.

Suddenly she turned around, was it to hide a blush? That's what I do sometimes, and said, "Well then I guess I'd better be off."

Now I know the two of them been training together a lot recently, but frankly, she really didn't look at all as if she was there to train. She wasn't in the right clothes for one thing, the tight little top and short skirt she was wearing were completely inappropriate for taijutsu. And I'm pretty sure she was wearing much more makeup than she normally does too.

Before you go on another rant, I got everything you said last time. Yes, if Kakashi wanted to fool around with pretty young women there'd be a queue halfway across Konoha. Yes, I trust him, and Sakura-chan too, sort of. I kept telling myself that she's just growing up, that lots of teen girls wear tight tops and short skirts and too much makeup. But I couldn't quite kill the God-awful nagging doubt. The man has to be the worlds most dedicated reader of porn featuring studly heroes and nubile young women. And while I wouldn't exactly describe Sakura-chan as nubile, if Kakashi isn't a studly hero, then hell, I don't know who is.

Anyways, bearing in mind what you said, "Why the hell don't you just ask her if she's a rival?" I decided to do a little investigating as to what her true intentions really are. So I arranged to have some extra time for lunch and hurried over to the hospital.

It wasn't hard for me to 'run into' Sakura in the cafeteria (I am a ninja after all), and we sat together eating horrible bland hospital food. Ever so casually I remarked that she had been spending rather a lot of time with Kakashi recently.

Well at first she didn't say anything, she just chewed and chewed, like a camel that had forgotten how to swallow, but I couldn't help noticing that her neck had gone very very pink. It made my chest feel as if it was completely bound in chakra wire, being pulled tighter and tighter.

When I couldn't take anymore I croaked out, "Do you like him?"

To my surprise she looked straight at me, moist eyed, almost pleading. "You must think I'm such an idiot Iruka-sensei, and maybe it is just a crush but I can't help it, he's just so… so wonderful."

And she didn't stop there. She reached for my hand and clamped it in hers as if it was a lifeline. "I know I'm still too young, but I'm really quite mature, I mean I've seen so much and done so much, we all have. Tell me the truth, Iruka-sensei, do you think there's a chance he might like me too, one day?

As you can imagine I was floored. Surely Sakura must realize that Kakashi and I are more than just good friends. We live in the same apartment, a one bedroom apartment. Does she assume there are separate beds in there? One for him and one for me? After all, I know that she's an intelligent girl, a very intelligent girl, I was her teacher too remember.

I couldn't answer. For the first time in my life I behaved like a complete and total coward. I just spluttered something about the time and ran.

So now I only have one more day before Kakashi comes back to resolve this mess. I may have just nudged Sakura into confessing to him, and there's nothing good that could come from that, for any of us. But on the way home I stopped in the drug store and bought a bottle of pink nail varnish, just in case. I'll need to work on my technique though. At my first attempt I got it everywhere.

Yours, caught between a rock and a hard place, with shiny pink toes,

Iruka.


	13. Chapter 13

Dear faithful friend,

And I've never needed faith or friendship more. To think that just a couple of weeks ago I was completely blissed out, up in the hills with Kakashi and not a care in the world.

Today I spent most of the day teaching on autopilot and writing this. It's kind of shocking how none of the kids actually noticed. Normally I'd have my lessons planned down to the finest detail, but today I walked in without the faintest idea what I'd been doing all week, or what I was supposed to do next. I just pulled out some chakra charts, informed them that I expected them each to give a ten minute presentation on chakra control tomorrow, and told them to get on with it. And they did. Makes me wonder why I usually bother putting in so much effort.

But whatever, I needed some time to think. So I sat in an empty desk at the back of the class with a pile of papers and pretended to grade.

I already have half the answer to my question. Sakura has feelings for Kakashi, or at least sincerely believes she does. But what about him? He has to have noticed, is that what the 'pretty feet' comment was all about? An invitation for me to look underneath? I know he likes women 'that way'. I know for sure that he fucked Anko a few times before we got together because she's told me about it in vibrant blood curdling detail. Of course it's a rare shinobi of Konoha who hasn't fucked Anko a few times. In fact I have it on excellent authority that she even managed to get Kotetsu and Izumo into a little three-way action, a couple of years back.

And it wouldn't be quite so bad if Sakura and Kakashi weren't still technically teammates. We all know that things happen on missions. It isn't hard to imagine the scenario, he's hurt, she's healing. Gentle touches become gentle caresses, and before either of them has given it a conscious thought they're doing the nasty dance up against the nearest tree. Now don't you even dare to suggest I've thought it, but that I could understand, even forgive, although it would break my heart in so many places that it would look like a patchwork quilt forever after.

The problem is that I know it wouldn't end there. Right now Sakura is just infatuated, serious but not incurable. But what that man can do with his hands, with his body… it would turn anybody's head three hundred and sixty degrees. It did mine. It would nudge her over the precipice and she'd fall so far so fast that she'd stake a claim to him and defend it with fire that would rival any demon with any number of tails.

And Kakashi's susceptible too, he admires beauty, I can see how he looks at women. Maybe drools over would be a more accurate term, he's never bothered to try to hide it. And the very worst thing is that way in the back of my mind I have to admit that they're perfect together, the Hokage's talented and lovely young apprentice and the village's sexy and mysterious hero. After a hot and heavy romance they'd settle down to produce scads of adorable kiddies with fluffy silver-pink hair. It's a story Jiraiya might have written in one of his horrible books.

What can I do? What chance does a boring chuunin academy teacher stand? Maybe I shouldn't do anything at all. Maybe I should just leave it all in the hands of fate and let it run its course. A whole day doing nothing but think and I'm right back where I started. Sometimes I think that thinking is way overrated, don't you think?

Yours, rapidly sinking underneath the underneath.

Iruka.


	14. Chapter 14

My patient long suffering dear,

Second letter in one day, although technically it's already tomorrow, I'm writing this in the wee small hours, by the light of the full moon streaming in through my open window shades. Kakashi is due back in the morning, but that's only half the reason I can't sleep, I've had an emotional rollercoaster of a day. My head's still spinning, but my heart, at least, has finally calmed down to something that might pass for normal.

I'd just got home after posting your letter and was chopping up veggies, looking at the knife and wondering whether I should use it to slice the radish or slit my wrists. No, not really, but I'll admit that I was feeling pretty damned low. Anyway I was distracted enough to cut my finger, very embarrassing for a chuunin I can tell you. So I went into the bedroom to fish a plaster out of the patch up kit we keep in there. And then I thought of your package. Now I know I'd said that I'd leave my fate to the hand of, well, fate. But that doesn't mean I can't try to tilt it a bit in my favour, does it?

So… I was trying on the costume, and trying to get the tail in just the right place, adjusting that strap that goes under and between, well you're a married woman you know what it goes between. Anyway at that precise particularly awkward moment there was a knock at the door and the squeak of a hinge. As my ill luck would have it I had forgotten to lock it, or even close it properly, so I peeped out… to see Sakura-chan peeping in.

I guarantee that you have never seen anyone, anywhere, ninja or otherwise, get out of anything and into their clothes as quickly as I did right then. I shoved the article in question back in its drawer and was at the front door before she'd had a chance to finish opening it.

I assumed she was there to pick up our conversation where we'd left off the day before, so I just rolled with it. I stepped back and said, "Come in the kitchen, I was just chopping up some stuff, and I'll make us some tea."

Sakura just looked at me, well stared to be more precise. I thought maybe it was the bandage on my hand, a medic would notice something like that, but she said, "Iruka-sensei, your hair, I've never seen it untied before."

I ran my hands through it and realized that in my hurry I'd forgotten to tie it back up after I'd let it down to put on the ears. Suddenly I felt very underdressed. So I went back into the bedroom to get my tie, and for some reason Sakura followed me. Not that I cared, it was reasonably tidy, I'd even pulled the duvet back in place, although I hadn't really made the bed properly.

Sakura glanced around while I fixed my hair and said, "Iruka-sensei, why do you have such a big bed if you sleep all the way on one side?" Well I'd said I'd leave my fate to the hand of fate, and if this was what fate was handing me…

I told her the truth. "That's Kakashi's side."

Just hearing myself say it, standing there, next to my rival for his affections, and Sakura just looking so pretty, pink and completely clueless. I suddenly felt an overwhelming desire to pick up his pillow and hug it, to smell the scent of his hair and to remember just how sweet it is to have him lying there with me, in our bed. As if it was something I never expected to experience ever again.

When I looked back at Sakura-chan she seemed to have shrunk back inside herself. It was like looking at the little girl who had been the most over emotional and over restrained over achiever in her pre-gennin class. She even had a bit of her old stutter. "I..Iruka-sensei, you mean you… you and Kakashi-sensei?"

Then she paused for far too long before she asked, "Why didn't you say anything? I mean I didn't know. I had no idea."

I smiled a thin sickly smile and said, "But you aren't supposed to know anything Sakura-chan, that's the shinobi way. Didn't you learn anything in my classes?"

She tried to look at anything but me and the bed. So that was when she noticed the half empty nail varnish bottle. She picked it up, stared at it, then down at her painted toes, her very pretty painted toes.

My first instinct was to snatch it from her, as if it was an explosive tag in the hands of an infant. You have forgiven me for that, haven't you, by the way? I swear I don't know how he got it out of my vest. And you said you'd always been planning on demolishing that old shed.

Anyways, she's good, at least as fast as me, and I missed. Failed. She kept her fingers wrapped tightly around it and looked at me very hard and asked, "Who's been painting their fingernails?"

Busted, how embarrassing. It was like one of those awful dreams where everything is going horribly wrong, in slow motion, and there's nothing you can do to stop it. So I said, "No one. That is it was toenails actually, at least I tried but I made a horrible mess, the varnish got all wrinkly and all over my toes and ran down between them so that they were all stuck together. It took me ages to clean it off again."

Well she swallowed hard and asked, "You want to have pink painted toenails Iruka-sensei?" I got kind of flustered at that and said, getting quieter and quieter, as I got in deeper and deeper, "Yes, er no, that is, it's just that Kakashi said that you had pretty feet and then I noticed that you had painted toenails, so I thought maybe if I painted mine he'd think that my feet were pretty too."

As you can imagine by then I was blushing hotter than a furnace. Sakura, on the other hand, had gone very pale. She looked at me with her bright emerald eyes and said, "You'd do that for him, paint your toenails pink?" It all just came blurting out, "Of course I would. I'd paint my whole body pink if that's what he wanted. Just not everyday of course, that would be ridiculous."

Sakura's lower lip started to tremble and she hugged me so hard that I really regretted all that strength training she's been doing with Tsunade-sama. Then she shoved me back so that I was sitting on the bed and sat on the floor at my feet and gave me an indescribable look that she can only have learned from her new mentor. "It's really not that hard, by the time we're done you'll have the prettiest feet in Fire Country.

Anyway she lotioned my feet, which tickled like the very devil, as if I wasn't red enough already, clipped my nails and filed them nice and round. There's something very intimate about letting someone else touch your feet. Especially when that person has an emotional attachment to someone you're emotionally attached to. It had a strange awkward, even incestuous, feel to it, but I knew there was no way heaven and earth combined could have stopped her at that point.

She stuffed cottonwool between my toes and put on the varnish with clean even strokes like a real pro. Then she gave me a really sweet smile and said, "Now don't touch it or take the cotton out until it's nice and dry or it will smudge." I would have kissed her but I was afraid to move, and before I knew it she was gone.

I must have sat there for more than an hour. The paint was so smooth and shiny that I daren't touch it before it was dry, and how was I to know if it was dry without touching it? Anyways, by the time I pulled out the cotton my toes were so cramped that I couldn't even stand up. So I just sat there looking at them. And they looked so strange, so different. It was really odd having someone else's feet hanging off the end of my body. I was very very tempted to just clean the stuff off again, but it was fate that had put it there and it looks as if it intends to keep my options open for at least a little bit longer.

Naturally I'll have to wear socks tomorrow (today). The kids at school will probably snicker about my 'socks and sandals', but as long as Kakashi likes it's a small price to pay.

Yours, Konoha's most foolish fool in love,

Iruka.


	15. Chapter 15

.Dear Friend,

Sorry I haven't written in more than a week. Somehow when Kakashi left he took all my motivation with him. Of course he came back first, briefly, much too briefly.

He was supposed to be back after two days, but when was that man ever on time? I waited for him as long as I could before leaving for school, and the day dragged forever, what with me thinking that he was probably waiting for me at home and all.

But he wasn't.

I'd been preparing since Thursday to have his favourite meal ready, picking up different stuff here and there. I even made a chocolate cake. But at midnight I packed it all away in the fridge untouched, my stomach was too jittery by then to handle food. I knew that he was only supposed to be doing a bit of last minute training, but we all know that whatever can go wrong probably will. And he has a way of courting disaster that surpasses anyone else I've ever met and, trust me, I've met a few.

I don't remember when I finally got to sleep, but I very clearly remember being woken up, by someone screaming, "Ruka sweetie, Ruka! What the hell is wrong with your foot?"

I almost screamed too as I instinctively tried to pull the appendage in question out of the iron grip of the crouched figure beside our bed. Then as my eyes can into focus I saw the silver hair in the silver moonlight. Kakashi was tenderly stroking each toe and testing the smooth paint on my nails with the pads of his fingers.

It was hot and I'd thrown aside the covers, my foot must have been hanging off the side of the bed and caught his attention as he stealthed his way in.

I already mentioned, didn't I, that having someone else touch your feet is decidedly intimate? Well having someone examine them in that much detail feels at least borderline perverted. And I was immediately consumed with the deepest regret that I had ever let Sakura-chan anywhere near my toes.

So I said, "Nothing. That is… I just painted my toenails a bit. With nail varnish. Pink nail varnish."

It didn't help. If anything the scrutiny got closer. "You mean it's not a jutsu, or a weird disease?" I would have whacked him for making such a horrible suggestion, but by then he had my big toe in his mouth and was sucking it, which was really, really weird, but I've gotta admit, kind of sexy too.

The next thing I new he was on the bed beside me, looking eye to eyes, asking, "Why do you want to have pink toenails?"

Needless to say, this wasn't exactly the reaction I'd had in mind, but all I could do was say. "To make them pretty." After a too long pause I added, "Do you think they look pretty."

This time the pause was painful, but eventually he said, "Do you want the truth? Or will the right answer be good enough?"

My heart sank. It took such a long time to break him from telling me whatever he knew I wanted to hear. He's so damned good at it, and it was driving me crazy. I actually had to threaten him with physical harm (I know, as if, but it showed him that I was serious), to get him to admit to any honest opinion that was different to mine. So even though the truth was the last thing I wanted to hear, I felt my head nodding forward and heard the word "truth" come out of my mouth.

At least he had the good manners to look away. "No. Sorry, but your feet are much too long and bony to be called pretty, and because they're thin it makes your ankle bones look as if they stick out too much, even though they don't."

I can't say it wasn't the answer I was expecting, maybe it's because Kakashi does truth so devastatingly well that he lies so much, but I was still crushed.

So was he. Even the fake twinkle faded from his eye, and he hauled me up against him, not hard but tight, wrapping me with his long arms. "You don't get it do you? Your feet don't have to be pretty for me to love them. I love them because they're your feet, I love every part of you. They could be club feet with hooked toes and bunions and I would still love them every bit as much."

He pushed me back on the bed and started raking his eyes over my hair, my face, my body, examining every last part of me as if he was searching for lice. And then he said something so wonderful it just about broke my heart.

"Iruka-sensei (he only calls me that when he's deadly serious), I don't love you just because you're beautiful, which you are by the way, I love you because you're you. Beauty is fragile, people get scarred, maimed, broken, and it always fades away in the end. But what you have is indestructible and it will never ever fade. It's who you are, what you are, and I'm gonna keep loving it and loving you for just as long as you'll let me."

It was all I could do not to start bawling but he'd already bounded away towards the kitchen saying, "Got any food around here? I'm starving."

So we ate our special meal together, cold and congealed, straight from the plastic containers. We'd hardly tossed the last one in the sink before he was dragging me back to the bedroom, promising to admire my beautiful face and beautiful feet and all the beautiful parts in between. He rather broke the romance of the moment though, by giving my crotch a wicked grope as he said that last part.

When I woke up it was barely light, but he was already packed and ready to go, and I'd expected to have at least the weekend together. He hadn't eaten any breakfast either, I knew because he hadn't made coffee, and that was always a bad sign.

But I did a very good job keeping the nervousness out of my voice as I asked, "Have you been waiting for me?"

He came and crouched next to the bed, kissed me and said, "Couldn't leave without saying goodbye now, could I?"

Then he did something he's never done before. He got in bed beside me, fully dressed, fully armed, with all his gear. He hugged my just a bit too tight and said, "So, about my book…"

His book? I'd all but forgotten about the horrible thing. As you can imagine, I went rigid. But either he pretended not to notice, or he really was too distracted, because he didn't miss a beat. "My clan has never been very big or very wealthy, I don't have a lot to leave, and most of what there is has to stay in the clan. It will go to some distant cousins somewhere. I'm sorry, I've tried, but there's nothing I can do. That's why I wrote that book. If I don't come back give it to Jiraiya…"

I started to squawk, but he shoved a gloved hand over my mouth and said, "Please, hear me out, I've been practicing this for a long time."

There was painful pressure building up in my chest, I think his hand on my mouth was the only thing keeping it in. But I managed a nod, and he carried on.

"Jiraiya will arrange to get it published so that it comes out on the anniversary of my death. That's when everyone's nostalgia for The Copy Ninja should be peaking. They'll have had time to forget what a bastard I am, but not yet forgotten me completely. Look, I know I'm not the writer that Jiraiya is, but I think it has a few moments, and it should bring in enough cash to give you a decent retirement."

He kissed my forehead, slowly removed his hand, kissed my lips and said. "Promise?"

All I could do was nod again. Then with one more lingering kiss that melted into a, "Goodbye my lovely I, I love you", he was gone. A second later I was out of bed, screaming "Goodbye" and "I love you" and "You'd better come back to me you bastard", out of the window until all the neighbours were at their windows staring.

So, I've been trying to get all this straight in my mind all week, but I still can't get past the 'if I don't come back.'

He's never ever said anything like that before.

Yours, with insides more knotted and twisted than the chakra rope in my classroom, after the kids have been playing with it all day under the negligent eye of a sub.

Iruka.


	16. Chapter 16

A/N Well dear readers, my life just got a little bit busier (baby boy, chocolate brown eyes, already!). So I may not be able to add to this quite as often. But I felt guilty with the way the last letter left everything. So to calm down the angst I offer this:-

Dear Voice of Reason,

I've been thinking through everything you said in your last letter, and you're right you're right you're always right. Obviously Tsunade has been prepping Kakashi for this mission for months.

I can see now that his 'mission' at that spa up north was just to force him to relax and to make him give his mind and body the rest they needed. He may seem to lounge around reading porn twenty five hours a day, but one look at him will tell you that that's his biggest lie And when he trains he trains like a demon. I swear he's pushed himself past so many barriers that I'm surprised he has any left to surpass. But I also realise that she was prepping me too. Forcing me to wait and hold it all together, not knowing what he was going through. So now that I have to deal with the real thing I have a prayer of getting through it without suffering a major melt-down.

She is a medical genius after all, she must have known exactly how fragile he was back then. So I really should have a little confidence and trust that she knows what she's doing now, shouldn't I? And it looks as if she has a softer heart than I gave her credit for too. I remember hearing that she originally left Konoha because she'd lost some important people, so she understands what it's like. That's why she sent us both on that little retrieval mission, 'needed me to help talk the kid down' my eye. Kakashi could talk a winkle out of its shell without even taking his eyes off his wretched book. The only reason I was there was to give us a chance for some 'quality' fun along the way.

So yes, I'm feeling much more optimistic, for today at least. I'm with you that living the life he has Kakashi might well have misinterpreted caution and kindness for desperation, and therefore over estimated what was going to be expected of him. God I hope so.

And as for that other matter, can you believe the nerve of the man, leaving me porn as his damn legacy? Why couldn't he have just written a memoir like anyone else? Yes yes I know, by the time the censors were done with it, it would have been two or three hundred pages of black ink. But even so, surely he has something to offer the world other than secret knowledge and public perversion. You've got to admit, it does seem as if he's determined to embarrass me even beyond the grave. I swear, if he doesn't come home alive, I might just have to drag his delectable arse right back here from the afterlife and strangle him.

Yours, all reasoned out,

Iruka.


	17. Chapter 17

Dear Bestest Friend Ever,

Well I'm back home and back to the grindstone, AKA twenty something hyperactive kids with near-gennin ninja skills. And if that won't grind you down I don't know what will.

Thanks again for the invite to spend the weekend with you all on the farm. You were right it did do me good to get out of town. The fresh air, fresh food and change of scene were exactly what I needed. I'm really impressed with everything you've done with that old place, making it modern and efficient but still keeping its old fashioned charm.

I still can't believe how much your little one has grown, the others too of course. And when did Kiki get to be such a little flirt? She had way too much fun making me blush when she was explaining how you put the bull out to run with the cows. And the way she kept explaining milking as 'squeezing the cow's titties', who would have thought a seven year old could make something so simple sound so, well, perverted. I'd keep that one a safe distance from her uncle Kakashi if I were you.

And now that I've mentioned my everloving absent partner, I managed a whole dozen sentences first though didn't I? He's been gone more than a month now and I'm good, more or less. I did get into a bit of a panic yesterday when Genma let it slip that he'd spent those few days before he left at the Uchiha compound. Ok, I'll fess up, he had to sit on my chest and put a freeze jutsu on my vocal cords until I'd calmed down, because we both know what that means. I suppose that it's inevitable that he'll go up against Itachi again sometime. But on the other hand when he left he was as physically and mentally fit as I've ever seen him, so if it has to be then this is as good a time as ever.

It's easy to forget that he's one of the world's most powerful ninjas when you've seen him in some of the situations I've seen him in. Now now, I didn't mean _those_ situations. Well maybe, but there are others too. Like when he's pouting because I let Naruto have the last strawberry, or first thing in the morning when he's being all soft and snuggly. I may be the only person in the world who gets to see that side of him and I treasure it. And although I know that I complain about the stress and the long separations, I'm incredible proud of the other side too.

We're both Konoha's first and each other's second, that's just the way it is and the way it has to be. I just have to hold onto my precious memories and keep them in my heart until he gets back, when I'll be able to hold onto something much more substantial, and even more precious, instead.

And please don't feel guilty about ditching me with the kiddies on Saturday night. I meant it when told you that I wanted you to go out, you two need to spend a bit of time alone too.

In fact I rather enjoyed being the babysitter. And I'm sure I learned more than I'll ever want to know about pigs from that neighbour of yours who came over to keep me company. No seriously, it was nice just chatting about ordinary stuff, even pigs. He really was quite charming and funny, I'm sure that Kakashi would like him too.

In fact why don't you bring him with you the next time you come to the village? We'll all get together and have dinner, he must get very lonely on that big farm of his all on his own. I'm surprised you haven't found him a good woman yet. Don't tell me that you've finally given up on your chronic matchmaking ways. He's a very handsome man and I'm sure that you know dozens of single women who'd just love to be set up with him. I know that I still have plenty of mental scars from all those you tried to hook me up with. No seriously, most of them were very nice, I just wish I'd told you sooner that I prefer men.

Well it's getting late and I have an early start tomorrow, although not quite as early as yours. That's one thing I'd never get used to on a farm, getting up two hours before dawn. Maybe tomorrow will bring me good news, maybe it will even bring me Kakashi.

Yours, feeling refreshed resolute and steadfast,

Iruka.


	18. Chapter 18

Dear most reliable friend ever,

I can't tell you how sorry I am for that scene I made. For what it's worth, however much I embarrassed you, I was embarrassed at least a hundred times more, once I started breathing again that is.

I know the Hokage told him to deliver the message immediately but you'd think one of my own former students would have more sense than to tell me that Kakashi had just been declared MIA in the middle of a crowded cattle market. But then again Rock Lee and common sense have never exactly been on speaking terms. It's a wonder really that my bloodcurdling shriek didn't cause a much worse stampede, and it's a credit to all you farmers that you calmed your animals down before someone got trampled or gored.

Speaking of which, it's a good thing your neighbour came with you, the way he just dived in with all those cows and shooed them back into their pen like some kind of superhero in rubber boots and corduroy trousers… I'll have to thank him again in person the next time I see him.

In my own defense it was a terrible shock. A really. Terrible. Shock. I mean Kakashi's only been away for six weeks, and the way he'd been talking I'd expected him to be gone for months. At least. Of course I don't know all the details. Shit I don't know any of the details. And of course I don't expect to. But all that preparation for a mission that was only expected to last less than two months? My head is still reeling. Hell the whole freaking world is still reeling. Just where did he go and what did he have to do when he got there? And why the desperate hurry to get him back now?

As expected the retrieval team had already left by the time I got to the Tower. Not that I'd have had a chance at getting on it anyway. Not with every jounin in the village hustling to get chosen. Under other circumstances it would have been heartwarming to see how much everyone cares about him, especially since he comes across as such a loner. But I already knew that in his quiet insidious way the pervert has wormed his way into a lot more hearts around here than just mine.

So… I'm really sorry that I turned your rare visit home into such a nightmare. And I know you understand and forgive and all, but I still needed to say it. And please don't fret. You are and will always be my bestest closest friend, but I really do have a lot of emotional support here in the village. There's not a chance in hell that I'll be allowed to sit around and mope.

Anyway, the chances are the team will be back with him any day, slung on someone's back, passed out from sharingan overuse and limp as a rag. And before I know it I'll be sitting by his bedside in the hospital, waiting for him to come around enough for me to beat some sense into him for being such a bloody overachieving moron. Again.

Yours, doing my damndest to see the glass as half full,

Iruka.


	19. Chapter 19

Hey,

Sorry but that's the best I can come up with. You see Tsunade sent out another hunt and rescue team today. That's the third. I saw them leave through the main gate on my way to the academy. I seem to spend half my time hanging out by the gate recently, just waiting. Just standing there, hoping beyond hope that I'll see Pakkun trotting through it, with a doggie grin on his face and a cryptic message committed to his memory. I'm even looking forward to his inevitable snarky remark about stupid humans who are stupid enough to think that anyone could bring his master down.

The rest of the time I don't have any choice but to keep on going through the motions. So here I am doing my safe little job at the mission room and teaching the kids… on autopilot.

Now don't get me wrong, this isn't some major pity fest, well maybe just a bit, you did ask me to spill my honest feelings remember. But Kakashi and I, we've always known that we're both Konoha's first and each other's second. It's the price of being a ninja, the bargain we strike for the chance of living life on the edge. And for Kakashi there's nowhere else. He's lived on that edge all his life and he needs it every bit as much as he needs food and oxygen.

It's just that… I'm starting to feel that it's been going on for too long, this searching and not finding anything. He was officially declared MIA nearly two months ago now. Part of me, most of me, still feels it's a good thing that the teams haven't come up with anything, not even one ridiculous silver hair. If he was in danger he would have got a message out somehow. If he'd been killed it would be all over the bounty network. Hatake Kakashi just does not disappear without a trace unless he wants to. Unless… unless he was too deep undercover to have a choice, and then something terrible went wrong.

And that's where I break down. I know that he was doing research on those damn eyes before he left. And there are only two people he could have needed that information for, and both of them have very unfriendly… friends.

And here I am getting gloomy again. No, I'm still with Pakkun on this one. I'm keeping my chin up and my head high. I know my man pretty well, and I know what it would take to bring him down. And frankly, those two clusters of goons don't have it.

On other matters, please thank your neighbour for the book he sent. I'm quite sure it will tell me more than I have ever wanted to know about pigs, about two thousand pages more actually. No really, it was sweet of him and I do appreciate the thought. It's just that, right now… well I'm sure you both understand.

Yours, wedging my fears between a rock and an even harder place,

Iruka.

A/N In response to fears from a few reviewers, and to reassure my other readers… no, this is NOT a deathfic. All the action here is in the time skip and both Kakashi and Iruka are there, bright and shiny as new, when Naruto gets back.

I'm just setting you all up for some wicked whammo surprises. Actually I have been for quite a while (evil laugh).


	20. Chapter 20

Dear Sneaky,

I'm finally on to you. Took awhile I admit, I've been …preoccupied. So you're trying to get me to give up ninjaing to live a life of bucolic bliss like yours. Again. And how exactly do I know this? Well I got yet another book from Himora Shinzo, your friendly neighbourhood pig farmer. I think it's the six or maybe the seventh. But anyway, this one also included a copy of last week's Pig Entrepreneur Journal, folded to the ads in the back pages, with HIS AD for a farm manager circled in thick red marker.

Now I realize I may not be the sharpest shuriken to ever come off the forge, but even I can recognize the blatantly obvious when it stabs me in a lung. So this is the little scheme the two of you have been hatching? I'm supposed to read all these books, become an instant pig expert, and give up my dangerous life of snotty kids and truculent jounin for a nice safe one of animal husbandry.

My dearest girl, what on Earth gave you the idea that I have any interest in pigs? Was it that little tip I gave you for Mr. Pinky aways back? Because that came from Kakashi, not me. Or are we both supposed to rip up our roots and move out into the country? Now I'll admit the salary he's offering is rather more than both of us make together, I had no idea that there was quite so much money in pigs, but really!

I know you have my best interests at heart sweetie, and I hope I don't come across as sounding cross, because I'm not. Not really. But you've known me all my life and you know that all I've ever wanted to be was a ninja. And I realize that Kakashi going missing for so long has scared you, but it's ok, I promise. He'll be back before we know it, I'll be ridiculously happy again, and we'll both be teasing you that you should have enough kids of your own to mother by now without mothering us too.

There's also the small matter of the oath of loyalty that came with the Leaf headband, or had you forgotten that? Things being as they are, everyone still running back to back missions and all, Tsunade isn't very likely to release me from it. And there's even less chance she'd release Kakashi. And none at all that he'd ask her to. The man's a ninja through and through, a shadow of the night. Take away that and there's nothing left. You didn't really think I'd go anywhere without him did you?

I've already written to Himora-san declining his generous offer, and explaining that someone like me who was born to be a shadow could never become something as solid as a farmer.

Yours, sweating through the One Hundred Rules one more time, and wouldn't have it any other way,

Iruka.


	21. Chapter 21

Hey,

Back to the depressing greeting, although I'm really much more angry than depressed.

You see the third team came back today, with nothing. But that's not the bad news. Tsunade isn't sending another. If Kakashi doesn't find his own way home in the next two months we'll have a memorial service, his name gets added to the stone …and that's it. All officially done and dusted, one Copy Ninja extraordinaire, RIP.

It's a very good thing Naruto's not here. It would hardly further his ambition to be the next Hokage if he were to rip the current Hokage's head off with his bare hands now would it?

Sasuske on the other hand, I almost wish he was around. For this I mean, not just in general, that I wish he hadn't turned traitor and gone rogue and joined one of our worst enemies and everything. That kind of goes without saying. I was his teacher too, and while I agree that he always seemed to be the coldest of cold little bastards, I always felt that there was some glimmer of softness under that icy shell. He had a bond of real respect and admiration for Kakashi, one that had rooted quite a few tendrils of actual affection. They seemed deeper in a way than even his grudging friendship with Naruto. If he could only see how everyone, and I do mean everyone, is reacting to the news, I can't help thinking that it would resonate with something deep inside him and I don't think he'd have left this village quite so easily.

Sakura, surprisingly, has been a pillar of strength. In fact I have a strong suspicion that the third search team and these extra two months are largely a result of her influence. Of course I know that she loves Kakashi too, or at that least she thinks she does. I'm starting to suspect that she has such a big heart that she just needs an outlet for her affections. The guy who eventually taps into it will be one lucky man.

As for me, well, I may be down but I can promise you my dear that I'm far from out. You see I have a plan. Tsunade may have given up on Kakashi but I most certainly have not. I am going to pay for my own damn mission to get out there and find him. It will be an A class mission, with a jounin team leader and at least one additional chuunin. And I think you can guess who that chuunin will be. After all, it is part of my job to assign these things.

It won't be cheap, in fact it will take almost all of my savings. But what the hell am I saving them for if not for this?

Yours, the master of my own destiny and with the cash receipt to prove it,

Iruka.


	22. Chapter 22

Gaaaah!

I can't even manage a depressing greeting this time, unless you count a primal scream. And I'm sorry if this is covered in wood splinters and bloodstains. I just put my fist through the table. Tsunade has upgraded my mission to S rank.

She pointed out in her oh so subtle way, ie a Sannin death-glare and a very hard and pokey finger poked into my chest with every word, that three teams of her best shinobi have already failed at this particular task. She knows bloody well that she can't turn down my request I'd have most of the village on my side in an eyeblink, but by marking it for ANBU only she's made it damn clear that _I'm_ not going to be going anywhere.

The bruises on my ribcage will heal in a few days, especially since Sakura already treated them for me. The fury that's eating me alive will take a lot longer to go away, if it ever does completely. Not only has she upranked it, but she's marked it for a team of four. Four ANBU, you don't even want to guess how much that costs. But I wasn't once the sneakiest pre-gennin in Konoha for nothing, and I've been living with the King of Sneak himself for two years. I WILL find a way to raise the money.

As I already said, Kakashi has a lot of friends, and I have a few of my own. Of course I can't ask openly, I don't want to get anyone else in trouble with the Hokage, since she's dead set about putting this behind her. And I can understand why, from a political point of view. Sending one of the village's most valuable ninjas on a suicide mission is hardly likely to sooth any of the doubts the council had about appointing her in the first place. Village finances are still strapped after the war with Sound. We're short on capable people. But fuck that, fuck politics, this is Kakashi, and I for one won't give up on him.

Now before you even think about misunderstanding let me make it clear that I don't want any of your money, as I said, I'll find away. I know perfectly well that you are just keeping your heads above water, with the kids and the improvements to the farm and everything. I just need someone to rant to. I've got a pretty good death-glare of my own, and I have to teach little kids tomorrow. I'd prefer not to scar too many of them for life, they aren't the ones that deserve it.

I just need to let off some steam so that I can get my brain working enough to start dealing. And right now the room is so full of steam that I can't see out of the windows, although that might be the tears of rage in my eyes.

Yours, blowing my top but not my resolve,

Iruka.


	23. Chapter 23

Oh Wise and Wonderful Woman,

My dear you are brilliant, and I love you, love you. But you already know that don't you. Here I've been sweating and fretting about how raise some cash, and the answer has been staring me in the face the whole time. Or it would have been staring me in the face if I hadn't shoved it at the bottom of my weapons drawer. Of course! I can sell Kakashi's wretched, beautiful book!

Or rather, as you so cleverly point out, I can sell MY book. He did give it to me, that makes it mine, so I can do anything I want with it. Right? And I'm sure it will bring in more than enough loot to cover the cost of even an outrageously overpriced S ranked mission. Jiraiya makes scads of money with his books, that's how he finances his travels and his womanizing and… well I'd prefer not think about that in too much detail right now. You know, what with Naruto being with him and all. I can only deal with one nervous breakdown at a time thank you very much.

Which does raise a rather sticky little problem, how do I go about this exactly? Jiraiya is my only contact as far as publishing and stuff goes, especially this kind of… um… content. And God only knows where he is. It's not as if I can just look up 'Porn Publishers R Us' in the yellow pages and send a copy off to the top three listings.

That's one of the disadvantages of living in a hidden village, I don't get out much. Seeing as how it's forbidden for me to leave without very specific permission. I suppose I could sneak out of the gate if I really wanted to, but there's a good chance that I'd be hunted down and killed if I did, so I've never given it too much serious thought. Even on those rare occasions when I do get sent off somewhere, it's in the very nature of ninjaing to be silent and secret, so I don't exactly get much chance to mingle. Really it's a one in a million chance that I know even one person with the right kinds of connections.

Of course Kakashi might know, he's been everywhere, and he sure as hell knows everything else. But if he was here for me to ask then I wouldn't be in this God-awful situation in the first place, now would I?

Kakashi's alive. He's out there somewhere, I know he is. Tsunade's still new around here, she doesn't know him the way I do, and he is very easy to underestimate. He may give the impression of being scrawny and shabby, heck you could mistake him for a wrung out rag in the wrong light, if he wants you to. But under that scruffy uniform he's like a racehorse, pure gleaming muscle. The only reason he collapses from chakra depletion on missions on a fairly regular basis, is that his attacks are all such chakra hogs, and because the fool doesn't begin to know the meaning of holding back. Not because he's weak.

Erm, not that I want Tsunade looking under his uniform of course. Unless he's hurt, and it's in a purely medical context, and even then I'd want her blindfolded. Everything under there is mine.

So anyways, the point I'm making is that Kakashi isn't missing, it's just that we can't find him. And all that means is that we've got to look harder. And come to think of it, a team of four ANBU on an S ranked mission sounds like a decent way to start. Chances are he's slouched in the back of a cave right now, using his remaining flickers of chakra to make a light to read Icha Icha by while he waits for back-up.

The other possibility, though I'm starting to doubt this more and more, that he's still undercover. He was clearly under the impression from the outset that this was a long term mission, as in months and months long. And if he doesn't expect anyone to be looking for him, anyone from Konoha that is, you can bet your last shiriken that no one will find him.

Aaargh, all this thinking is driving me nuts. If only I knew something, anything. I can't imagine where he's gone that Tsunade thought he'd waltz in and out, mission accomplished, in six weeks, but where he expects to be hunkered down for at least twice that. She's a sannin but he's a genius, who's judgment is likely to be more reliable?

Anyhow, that's all beside the point right now. What I need to do is find someone who will take this manuscript off my hands in exchange for a nice fat cheque.

Yours, flicking through the yellow pages under P,

Iruka.


	24. Chapter 24

Hey,

Just a quick thank you.

You've done it again, you've made all my wishes come true. Tell me, did you apply to be my fairy godmother, or did the fairy mafia boss godmother make you an offer you couldn't refuse? That must be it. No one would volunteer for the job, not with the company I hang out with these days (aka Sharingan Hatake).

So… your neighbour actually _wrote _all those books about pigs, _all_ of them. Not only that, but his publisher has an 'adult' entertainment division too. Well I suppose that part's not so surprising. After all, even farmers have to get their jollies somehow, current correspondents excepted of course. Now don't take that the wrong way my dear, one look at all those kiddies you have running about the place makes it pretty obvious where you're getting your jollies.

But back to the matter in hand. You gave him the copy of the book I sent you ages ago, and he liked it, as in really liked it? And he's going to make sure it gets published. I did get that right didn't I? Make sure? He must sell a helluva lot of pig books if he has that kind of clout with his publisher, no wonder he's willing to pay so much to a farm manager. There must be a lot more money in writing about farming pigs than in actually farming them.

It seems there's a decent amount in writing about perverted prodigals too, if the sum you mentioned is anything to go by. And yes, that advance will be plenty enough to cover the cost of this mission. In fact I'm going to write up the specs right now. BTW I want you to consider yourself my business partner in this, or my agent if you prefer. Anything I make from the sale that doesn't go to the mission is yours, I insist.

Once I have Kakashi back I won't need anything else.

Yours, off to write up a mission scroll, and then to peruse twelve volumes on the care and breeding of pigs.

Iruka.

A/N Just a short snippet this time, to keep things rolling. I promise they'll be more soon.


	25. Chapter 25

Status report.

I am delighted to inform you dear partner, that our manuscript has been cleared by the censors and that we are ready to roll.

Whoohoo!

Let me start at the beginning. As I'm sure you must realize, anything that a Konoha shinobi says or does or puts into print outside the village has to be carefully screened. Our jutsus and our techniques are our living and our lifeline, we just can't afford the risk that our enemies and competitors might get hold of advance information. Obviously that meant that 'the book' had to be approved by the Hokage before I could do anything with it.

My plan was to drop off the manuscript at Tsunade's office right after school so that I could get it approved in the least time and with the least embarrassment possible. So… I wrapped it up in three layers of brown paper, and mindful of the fact that I have a Hyuuga in my class, put it in a very uninteresting looking bag, one that certainly wouldn't seem to be worth the effort of cranking up a bayakugan for, and took it with me in the morning. Fortunately I was able to leave it locked in my desk all day. And, even more fortunately, it was still there after school

Anyways, Tsunade wasn't in her office, which isn't particularly surprising. She has a lot to do at the hospital and all kinds of meetings and stuff. But Shizune was there and she promised that she had the authority and clearance to do anything I needed done. And would you believe I hesitated, just for a moment, but it was there. You see I'd been mentally prepared to let Tsunade read through this piece of dross, but Shizune? She seems so sweet and innocent. But then I thought of Kakashi, trapped who knows where, and I bowed deeply to hide my blushes and offered it to her with both hands.

She asked if it was a book, so I said it was, and she started to unwrap it and asked if I'd written it all myself. Naturally I couldn't say yes, because it wasn't true. And I couldn't possibly admit that Kakashi had written it either. So I muttered that I was going to get it published anonymously and left it at that. Fortunately TonTon wandered in at that moment. More to give myself something to do than for any other reason, I picked him up as if he was one of Kakashi's smaller dogs and started to pet him.

Now I have never noticed before, but TonTon really is a very fine little pig. He has good development of the flesh along his flanks, well muscled shoulders, and should have some very nice hams by the time he's fully grown. I was just opening up his mouth to check out his teeth when Shizune peeled the last layer of wrapping paper off my manuscript and looked over at me. I must admit I felt a bit caught out, like a nosy kid, with the way I was acting. But I'd never looked at a pig really closely before.

So I said, "You know TonTon has some very fine points for his breed. He has perfectly formed little trotters, an exceptionally pert and curly tail, and his little piggy eyes are exactly the right distance apart. You might want to check his left ear though, it looks red. He might be getting a bit of a mite infestation in there."

Well she snatched him up and agreed at once that his ear seemed sore, so she got some drops and treated it while I held him still for her. And then we just chatted about pigs for a while. I said that TonTon seemed a bit small for his age, and asked what proportion of crude protein she was putting in his swill. She agreed but said that he'd always been the runt of the litter and would probably never quite catch up with the bigger pigs.

Suddenly I realized that I'd been there over an hour, that I should be in the mission room already, _and_ that Shizune hadn't even looked at my manuscript. She must have seen the panic in my eyes because she said. "Iruka-sensei, if you think this book is safe to publish and doesn't give away any of Konoha's secrets then that's quite good enough for me." Then she took a big stamp out of Tsunade's desk and stamped 'Approved by the Office of the Hokage' on the front cover in bright red ink.

Naturally I dashed off a note to Shinzo-san at once telling him that I'm all ready on this end and now I'm writing this to you. Everyone in the mission room has been giving me funny looks all evening. Hardly surprising, they haven't seen me so much as crack a smile in months. And now, with my mission and the book to pay for it all set to go, I'm just a hair short of hysterical.

Yours, ready to give Hugh Hefner a run for his money as a porn mogul,

Iruka.


	26. Chapter 26

Dear best friend forever,

The cheque came yesterday and the ANBU left in the early hours of this morning. I had stayed up most of the night by the gate waiting to watch them go. And they were magnificent. Black shadows briefly rippling in the darkness before they melted into it.

My ANBU.

I suspect that they knew I was there, hell of course they knew. Although I doubt that anyone below chuunin level would have noticed _them_ pass. I have a strong suspicion about who one of them is, the other three I have no idea, but I sent my heart with them all in any case. They can bring it back when they bring Kakashi, and if they don't, well then I won't need it any more. It will have been broken beyond repair.

Your neibour Shinzo, he asked me to call him that, dropped by after school as he said he would. I took him out for ramen, it was quite funny really, he said he'd never eaten it before. Frankly I believed him. When I asked what kind he wanted he said, "anything but pork", which made us laugh. So I ordered the house special for both of us, and he was just like Naruto the first time I treated him. You'd think he'd never eaten anything before with the fuss he made about how good it was. Then he insisted on paying for both of us, which was sweet but embarrassing, and we went home to go over some details about 'the book'.

You did know that he's volunteered to be my editor and facilitator didn't you? Just so that I can get the thing published faster? I can't tell you how grateful I am for the interest he's taking, I know how busy he must be. He wouldn't be advertising for a farm manager in a national farm magazine if he wasn't. I've told him myself over and over and apologised for his time that I'm taking up, but he just shrugs it off with a smile and says, "Anything for a friend."

And honestly, I had no idea how many decisions have to be made just to get something printed and out onto the shelves. There's the size, the format, hardback or paperback, even the typeface. And that's just to start. I was completely overwhelmed. Especially since, when I thought about it, I really don't give a damn about any of that stuff.

There was one thing though. When he asked about the cover I practically yelled, "Not orange." He looked at me really funny and said, "Of course not, why would anyone want orange. The cover sets the tone for the whole book you know. And for you we'll need something classy. I was thinking of blue, a nice azure or cerulean."

I hastened to tell him, yet again, that it isn't exactly my book, that I hadn't written it, and that I was doing this on behalf of a friend. But he obviously still doesn't believe me. Anyway, we agreed on a plain blue cover, maybe with some simple calligraphy. As he put it "Something you wouldn't be ashamed to be seen reading in public."

It almost made me cry.

But wait, I haven't got to the best part yet. I had noticed from the outset that there was something on his mind, smething that he seemed reluctant to get into, but obliged none the less. Well we'd already drunk enough tea to float a navy by this time, so I broke out the sake and we'd had a few cups. Perhaps it gave him the courage he needed, because he suddenly asked, "Have you ever heard of Icha Icha Enterprises?"

It pretty much put me on the spot. I glanced around, just to make sure that there were no flashes of orange visible on any of the bookshelves or horizontal surfaces. I really didn't want to lie, not that I have a problem with lying per se, I'm a ninja, deceit is what we do, but he'd been so nice and so upfront with me. On the other hand to just come right out and say, "Hell yes, don't you know that I live with their most conspicuous and ardent fan?" didn't seem the thing to do either.

Fortunately I didn't need to. While I was still stalling he said, well spat out more like, "They're a thoroughly disreputable concern, regular smut peddlers. Nothing like your book, which is hot and witty and satirical, and is clearly the work of a comic genius. Anyway, the trouble is you see that they have the Adult Literature market in Konoha pretty much tied up, and we wouldn't want to risk upsetting them." He lowered his voice and said, "The rumour is they have a top ranked ninja writing for them, wouldn't do to upset them at all." As he was speaking his hand drifted to his neck of its own accord, as if he was rubbing a bandage around a slash across his throat.

I checked to see that I was still wearing my headband, but refrained from stating the obvious. Maybe it was the 'top ranked' part that worried him. But then he said something that will make me love him forever. "Would you mind if we don't release this in Konoha, and the area of Fire Country right around it? It will cut into your sales but could save a lot of nasty problems down the road."

I was so happy that I kissed him. Now bear in mind that I'd had a few cups of sake too. I'm not sure which of us blushed fiercest. Naturally after I'd finished stuttering and apologizing I assured him that it wouldn't be a problem at all, that I understood completely, and that under the circumstances Konoha would just have to survive without 'The Prodigal's Guide'.

So there you have it. The mission is in progress, the book is all set, and I don't even have to worry about my students getting hold of it and anyone recognising any of the more recognisable characters in it.

Yours, overflowing with optimism and the milk of human kindness.

Iruka.


	27. Chapter 27

Hey.

I'm sorry it's taken me so long to get back to you and it's a damn shame that I missed you when I was over there last weekend, it would have been one bright spot in a truly horrible day. But I was only at Shinzo-san's place for a few hours and we had a lot to do. He had the first proof copy of the book that we had to go over, and a whole lot of other crap to deal with. Not from him, I don't want to give the wrong impression. He was sweet and helpful and charming and a perfect host.

When I got back to the gate there were two ANBU waiting for me. Of course I knew why, even though I went into denial immediately and started rummaging for my exit papers and spluttering about bureaucratic screwups, and can't a guy go to a simple business meeting without all this fuss just to get back to his own home when he's been out running all night. Naturally they ignored me and whisked me home.

My search team had come back a few hours before, with nothing. And when I say nothing I mean nothing. The ANBU stayed long enough to make me some sweet hot tea and to make sure that I drank it.

Ha! ANBU making tea for a chuunin teacher. That's when it finally sank in.

Kakashi's not coming back. They're fucking ANBU, Kakashi was ANBU, and they know things that I don't. If there was anything to be found they'd have found it. They'd have made bloody sure that they found it because he was one of their own.

There, and that's the first time I've used the past tense for him.

They say that when you lose someone you go through four stages, denial, anger, grief and acceptance, something like that. Well as I was sitting on my couch gulping down burning hot sugary tea, without even feeling it, without even tasting it, I had all four of them barrel into me at the same time. I let go of the cup and a streak of black snatched it up before it hit the ground and set it on the table without spilling a drop. Weird how you notice ridiculous irrelevent details at a time like that. Then he had his arms around me and I was clinging to him like a stupid scared little girl. At least I didn't cry.

I could feel his armour under his cloak. It was like hugging a rock, and right then that's just what I needed, a rock to hold onto.

The other one did a quick scout around the place, no doubt checking for sharp objects and lethal toxins. I'm not the most active shinobi as you know, but still I have my share. Anyways, the next thing I was scooped up and ditched on Ko and Izu. They must have been expecting me because they were up and dressed, at four in the morning. As I said, a horrible day.

Since then one of them has been escorting me to the academy and the other one bringing me back. This is the first time I've been left on my own for longer than it takes to brush my teeth in four days. I appreciate their concern, hell I'd be doing exactly the same thing with either one of them. But they don't need to worry about me, and neither should you. I won't do anything stupid. One thing I learned from Kakashi over the years is that you celebrate your precious people when they're gone by letting their memories live on in you. Well I've got a lot of precious memories and I plan to take very good care of them. If this really is the end I owe Kakashi and the time we had together a lot more than that.

Iruka.

A/N Before you panic on me, no we are not done here, I'm just piling on the angst a bit. Patience! (Evil grin).


	28. Chapter 28

Dear One Steadfast Certainty in a sea of confusion,

So we had the funeral today. The truth is, I'm feeling so overwrought and overwhelmed right now that I have no idea where to start. Maybe I should start at the beginning and go through the day in chronological order.

I don't remember getting ready and putting on my funeral blacks. But I must have, because I was dressed and ready to go when Kotetsu and Izumo came to get me. I must have looked like shit too but they didn't say anything. All my insides were so seized up that I hadn't been able to eat or drink, hell I could barely breathe.

Of course there was no body, but that's not at all unusual for a ninja funeral, it's our destiny to live and die as shadows. We accept it along with the headband, as you know. You were a gennin too once. Anyway, we did the usual, each person dropping a token of particular remembrance onto the funeral pyre. There weren't quite as many Icha Icha books as I'd feared. Not that I'd regret seeing any number of those things go up in smoke, but there were probably enough that they could have got by without using any wood, even if there had been a real human corpse to incinerate, from the Akimichi clan.

I'd been up most of the night thinking about what I should offer. It briefly crossed my mind to burn that perverted outfit you got me, Kakashi would certainly have appreciated the thought. But it wasn't enough. I needed something that expressed the perfection of our love, something that would let him know what he will always mean to me. Sakura had argued with me long and hard that I should be the one to place a Konoha headband in the flames. But as far as most people are concerned Kakashi and I have never been more than close friends, we both wanted it that way. I insisted that as the only one of his team present, and therefore his closest thing to family, she should have that honour.

In the end I decided on one of his masks, with one white and one red rosebud folded inside it. Kurenai gave him a single white rose too, which was a little… unsettling. Tsunade put in a bouquet of lilies, which showed a little more insight into his character than I'd expected of her. Gai gave daisies and Asuma a spray of blood red poppies. In fact I was quite stunned at how many people thought of him in terms of some kind of flower. I thought I was the only one who knew that there's a fragile and beautiful spirit beneath the warrior and the legend.

I couldn't see what Genma put there, the flames were pretty fierce by that time, and I was already in my place at the back of the crowd. But it was the one and only time I've ever seen him lose his cool. Raidou promptly dragged him away, under cover of dropping in a little scroll that fitzed with a spurt of purple flames and orange sparks. There were a lot of foreign dignitaries present, so it wasn't the occasion for us to show any more weakness than we had to.

Then, as that fire flickered and roared and burned down to ashes, and the smell of burned paperbacks and incense filled the valley, I realized something. I had been looking at Kakashi's death as a purely personal loss. But it was so much more than that. As I looked around at the solemn faces I could tell that he was precious to every single person there, even if they didn't know him as anything more than a name in the bingo book. Kakashi represented a ninja ideal, the perfect blend of mind body and spirit that all the hidden villages strive for in all our shinobi. We were all there to acknowledge him as a man and a ninja, and if that ideal survives it will be in part because of him and as his legacy. I don't think I was the only one to silently promise to do my part in making sure that it did.

We were gathered, not just to grieve for his death, but to celebrate his life.

It was a good thing that the smoke gave me the perfect excuse for tearing up, because I have never felt more honoured to have been part of anything, than I am to have been part of Kakashi's life.

I suppose it was inevitable that Gai had been chosen to give the eulogy. Now if Genma was shaken enough to lose his cool you can imagine the kind of state Gai was in. Although you'd probably prefer not to. He stood by the gravesite, next to the urn filled with the still-smoldering remains of the pyre, and promptly turned into a human lawn sprinkler.

Now I must admit I wasn't really listening. My mind was still too full of my own thoughts, and I've heard Gai's speeches before, so have you. Do you really need to hear more than one of them? And it was hard to make out very much beyond the sobs anyway. Then I did hear something, quite distinctly.

"Shit! Don't tell me I'm late?"

The whole assembled crowd turned as one, and there he stood. Wearing dirty jeans at least three sizes too small, a ragged cut off shirt that exposed his tight scrawny abs and at least the first two ribs. And the hair… well lets just say the name 'Scarecrow' has never been more apt. The clean black mask was the only thing that looked normal.

As a mere academy teacher and desk chuunin I was at the far back of the crowd so I reached him first. And as he collapsed into my arms the corner of my eye caught the image of a half risen sunset making an abrupt about-face and sinking below the horizon.

So… I'm writing this from Kakashi's bedside in the hospital. And I can assure you that the three Sannin combined, plus the ghosts of the past Hakages that were summoned during the chuunin exam, couldn't force me to leave. By now just about everyone else tried and failed.

Once he'd been cleaned up a bit he didn't look so bad. A but skinny, well skinnier. At the best of times the man never has more than a half a percent body fat. But I dread to think what he has been doing with, or to, that eye. It's heavily bandaged so I can't see it, but almost all of the upper right side of his face is puffy.

The diagnosis is dehydration and acute chakra depletion.

So what else is new?

Yours, by my beloved's side and, not coincidentally, teetering on the edge of insanity.

Iruka.

A/N Yes, Kakashi was late for his own funeral. (Sorry I couldn't resist. I am weak.)

Feel free to flame me, I don't live at my email address so you won't burn down my house and scorch my babies.

A/N 2. I bet you can guess which sharingan jutsu Kakashi was away 'aquiring'.

...More to come.


	29. Chapter 29

Dear anxious friend,

Yes yes, I got your letters, and I can understand how impatient you must be for more news. To be honest I haven't had much to tell. I stayed at Kakashi's bedside for two days. I know it sounds silly but all I wanted to do was look at him. It's as if something inside me needs to catch up on all the 'looking at him' that I've missed out on over the past months, and won't be content until it has. Of course I want to touch him, and hear him say my name, and kiss him, and… well they'll be time for that when he's healed. For now just looking is enough. My eyes are in constant motion, tracking over his bandaged face, drinking in his features, savouring his outline under the thin hospital blanket. Seeing him fills me to overflowing with a warm glow, love I suppose. But it's not like the giddy, romantic, moonlight shining out of his ears kind of love that had me seeing sparkles when we first got together. This is deeper. And better.

I literally couldn't tear myself away. Well I did leave a few times, but only because everyone in the hospital was strictly forbidden to get me anything to eat or drink. As if that would get rid of me! I've done recon missions where I've gone for days at a time with no food or water. Not many, stealth's not really my thing, but I've done them. And I was _in _the hospital. I might have passed out from dehydration, but there wasn't any risk that I could die from it now was there? But anyway, after the first six hours Sakura got fed up with fretting over me and threatened to fix me up with an IV.

Actually what she said was, "don't I have enough to put up with stressing over one idiot sensei whose just run himself into the ground and beyond without having to watch you do exactly the same thing?" Then she got out a bag of saline and glucose and a dripline and gave me a very ominous look. A case of actions speak louder than words I suppose.

Truth is I'd have been happy to let her, if meant I could have stayed put. But when she started rummaging around for a urinary catheter I panicked and agreed to let her take over for a few. As it turned out she had an ulterior motive, beyond making sure that I had a chance to eat drink and pee that is. When I got back there was a much more comfortable chair beside the bed. I guess she had to be sneaky or she'd have been given hell by the other medics, who were still under strict orders to try to get me out of there by any means short of violence.

So… that semi blissful state was allowed to go on for all of two days. At the end of the second day Tsunade came _in person_ and told me in no uncertain terms that I was expected to be in my classroom the following morning. That is today. And… that if I had the good sense God gave a fruitfly I'd go home and get a decent night's sleep first. Which although I hate to admit it was good advice. Those kids show no mercy when there's the possibility of blood in the air. Even if, with me running on less than three hours sleep in two days, it was rather likely to be their own.

So I'm back teaching. Reluctantly. When the Hokage delivered her ultimatum it briefly crossed my mind to resign on the spot, but then I'd have had to hand in my headband, and as a civilian they would have been well within their rights to have me immediately booted me out of the hospital. You know, it being a ninja hospital and all.

Of course as soon as I arrived at the academy it became clear that the story of Kakashi's return from the dead was the hot topic of conversation freaking everywhere. So I had to spend the first couple of hours this morning explaining to the kids that no, he had not come back as a vampire, or as a zombie, or as a flesh eating ghoul. And that my very good friend is simply an extraordinarily good ninja, who has exceeded all expectations in successfully completing a near impossible mission, and who is now recuperating in the hospital.

I may also have floated the possibility that if they all sat down, shut up, and did as they were told, they just might get a few juicier details out of me at some unspecified time in the future.

Not that that's particularly likely. I still don't know very much more than that myself.

Sakura came to tell me that Kakashi rolled over and groaned this afternoon, and naturally I'm pissed as hell that I wasn't there to see it. But she's promised to send for me the very moment when he wakes up.

Yours, back in my hospital chair, busy preparing lesson plans on how to tell the difference between chakra depleted jounins, vampires and flesh eating ghouls.

Iruka.

A/N Some of those juicier details in the next letter XD


	30. Chapter 30

Hey there Hun,

That's as in Hunny Bear, not Attila The. I've been dealing with _her_ all week. She runs the floor of the hospital where they moved Kakashi. God knows I am fully aware that he's not always the most cooperative patient, even when he knows what he's doing. And I really shouldn't have lost my temper with her so…dramatically. But I still maintain that strapping a man who's registering at less than a decimal point of normal chakra reserves in full body restraints, just because he tried to go to the bathroom on his own, is over reacting.

Well anyways, he finally woke up enough to be fully coherent yesterday. And it was Shikamaru who came over to the academy to tell me. He sauntered in as if he had all the time in the world, handed me Sakura's note, and snagged Kohonamaru with a tendril of shadow before the wretched little brat was halfway out the door. Well I was pretty distracted as you can imagine. Natch I didn't hang around to see what happened next, but from the conspicuous lack of papers to be graded on my desk this morning, apparently not much.

Kakashi was sitting up in bed when I got there, trying valiantly to force the wildness out of his eye and his customary boredom in. We waited until everyone else had cleared the room then collapsed on each other weeping like the lovesick fools we are. He kept apologizing for putting me through all this, and saying how much he wanted to let me know he was still alive. But from the guilty-as-hell look plastered all over his face I can tell that he must have found being dead extremely convenient at the very least.

Of course I'd worked out that Itachi must be involved even before Kakashi came back with his eye looking as if it was about to explode. Add to that the fact that he'd gone solo, and expected to stay gone for a while, which meant he was doing infiltration and recon (assassinations are usually over pretty quickly), which in his case often enough means staking out a jutsu to copy. And let's face it, there are a limited number of people around who would have any use for sharingan jutsus.

Before you freak out on me, yes I can tell you this. It seems we're trying to shake loose a few leaks from the Akatsuki, and rumours that we have someone who can counteract Itachi's nastier little tricks 'are to be encouraged'.

Anyway, as I was saying, he had nothing to gain and everything to loose if they found out that reports of his untimely demise were… exaggerated. Haven't I been saying all along that the sneaky bastard wouldn't be found if he didn't want us to find him?

He _had_ planned to get back before the funeral. From the way his voice cracked as he said it I know he wanted to spare me that much at least. But when was he ever on time for anything? And you already know that part of the story.

I'd be suspicious that Tsunade had planned the whole thing, but it was too sloppy. If she'd wanted Kakashi's death to be really convincing she'd have had her team 'find' his body and then had it laid out in state for a few days, easy enough to fake. No, she was just plain wrong on this one. If she was that good at bluffing she'd win at cards a hell of a lot more often.

Sakura sent me home at midnight. She can be just plain scary when she's feeling protective. But she had a point. Even I could tell that kakashi was straining to stay awake for me. And she was sparing a thought for me too, what with school the next day and all. But I must admit I'd have been happier leaving Kakashi to one of the other medics. Not that she's not one of the best, but the way she tucked the cover over his face was… I dunno, it just sent a creepy shiver up my spine. They'd taken away Kakashi's mask when they'd stripped him of the rest of his clothes and it just seemed to me that she was touching his face a whole lot more than should be necessary to straighten out a sheet.

I don't think she still has any conscious romantic designs on him, but the girl's nothing if not tenacious. She pined over Sasuke for how many years? And Kakashi is a _lot _more friendly, well of course your average rock's a lot more friendly than Sasuske most of the time. Even if it only is in a teammate kind of way.

Yes we've already been through this, and I know what you're going to say. I just have to trust him and trust her. And I do, I promise, but shit, I just got the man back from the gates of hell, I'm allowed a few irrational possessive feelings aren't I?

Well word is I can take him home with me this evening. It's Friday so we have the weekend before I have to worry about anything else. I'm really glad that he prepped so well for this mission, usually he just dashes off right on the tail end of the one before. It means he's recovering much faster than I'd have expected. Hell he only regained consciousness less than twenty four hours ago, and he's already tried to get his hand down my pants three times… in the hospital! Good thing Atilla wasn't around, she'd have slapped us both in restraints. But then again bondage can be fun too.

Yours, looking forward to a door that locks, and where I have the key,

Iruka.


	31. Chapter 31

Dear Keeper of all my most secret secrets,

So Kakashi has been home all weekend. Shikamaru will be charged with watching out for him next week, at least when I'm teaching. It's a good choice, the pair of them have always got on well together, you know, both of them being geniuses of strategy, and lazy as hell. I just hope Shakamaru doesn't take up reading porn. And I must admit that in the pit of my stomach I'm very relieved that Sakura wasn't given that particular job. I know that she's better qualified, being a med nin and all, but Kakashi's problems aren't really medical. He just needs to be restrained from doing anything too utterly stupid until he has a bit more of his strength back, and a shadow user is perfect for that. And to be honest, the idea of a lovestruck Sakura watching my beautiful Kakashi, asleep and utterly vulnerable, for hours on end just isn't very conducive to my peace of mind.

Shikamaru, on the other hand, has just the right mix of lethargy and common sense to be perfect. I've often wondered if I should have put him on Kakashi's team, instead of Sasuske. He'd have helped to keep Naruto on the right side of manic, and no doubt Naruto's irrepressible energy would have helped to keep him on his toes a bit more often too. On the other hand if Susuke had been teamed up with Ino and Chouji he'd probably have defected right after their very first training session. But considering the way things turned out maybe that wouldn't have been such a bad thing either.

It was during one of Kakashi's more lucid moments that a messenger from the hospital delivered his clothes. That's right_, those_ clothes. The sorry rags had been laundered and pressed and all wrapped up in clear plastic. I _had_ been meaning to ask about that particular outfit ever since he'd shown up in it, showing rather more than it's decent for someone with a body like his to show anywhere in public.

Anyways, he saw my frown and immediately started laughing like a clogged drain. Then he raised one eyebrow. Well he might have raised both but I could only see one past the bandages, and said, "Ah yes, my girl-jeans. It's not every guy my age who can wear girl-jeans."

I resisted the obvious comeback that even fewer would want to. To be honest my sex-deprived-for-several-months dirty little mind was too busy hoping that they hadn't caused him any permanent damage. In his non-girl parts, that is. Not that he's grotesquely huge in that area. But I know better than anyone that he's got a significant amount of stuff down there to, well, stuff into a pair of jeans that aren't built to accommodate anything at all.

So that's when he decided that it was about time he inked me in on just a few of the details of what he's been up to these past months. His description was pretty much barebones, so I've taken the liberty of fleshing it out, if you'll forgive the expression.

Obviously he'd been sent off to do something very dangerous, and you know, sharingan related. Of course I don't know much more than that, nor should I. And, for the sake of my ability to sleep at night, nor would I particularly want to.

Now as I already mentioned, it's no secret that he infiltrated the heart of the Akatsuki. Well, apparently, after a few days of recon he'd realized that one of the gang had the most uncanny sense of smell he'd even heard of. He referred to him as Sharkboy, whatever that may mean. And that's coming from an Hatake, who grew up in a village full of Inuzaka's. He even suspected that the guy would be able to track scent under water. And, get his, Sharkboy could detect metal objects, and yes that means weapons, by the way they disrupt magnetic fields, including the magnetic field produced by a human body. Some freak huh?

So Kakashi'd gone in unarmed!! And… he hadn't been able to risk summoning one of his dogs. Sharkboy would have smelled the dog, and the smoke, and been onto him in an instant. Anyways, he'd disguised his own scent with botanical oils. That had given him cover during the mission, but after a few weeks the smell got permanently ground into all his clothes.

And this is where the tale gets interesting.

You see, once he'd done whatever he needed to do, in order to avoid being followed he'd stripped and scrubbed himself clean in a lake at the first chance he had. Which unfortunately, now left him not only unarmed, but naked.

In his chakra depleted state he knew that he couldn't stealth all the way back to Konoha, he'd be lucky if he made it walking. But he is, well you know, a genius and all, and he reckoned that a man swimming naked is a lot less suspicious than a man walking around naked. Clever, huh? So he'd been traveling under cover of darkness and spending his days hanging out around various bodies of water, surviving on roots and berries and anything else he could filch on his way past. Now hold that image in your mind, but not for too long, or I'll have to come over there and scratch your eyes out.

And apparently that's when he spotted the woman, yes the one whose clothes he came home wearing. She was out quite innocently walking her puppy around one of the prettier lakes up in the mountains.

I did mention that he'd had to get rid of all his clothes, didn't I? So obviously that meant no mask. And of course a stark naked Kakashi, with no mask, and a smile on his face, and glistening wet in the rays of the morning sun, would make any normal woman shed every stitch she's wearing. Which of course the poor innocent bedazzled fool did, pronto.

Part of me hopes that he at least gave her a damn good fuck for her trouble, but naturally a much larger part fervently hopes he didn't, and I'll be damned first before I ever ask him. I can imagine the poor girl, quivering with lust and anticipation, waiting for the water god she'd just seen emerging from the lake to come back and make good on his implied promise of mind blowing nookie. Only to eventually realize that the bastard had scarpered with her clothes.

And so that's how he came home wearing girl-jeans and a skimpy tank top. I suppose I should be glad he passed on the bra and thong. Or maybe he didn't pass on the thong. He never did explain where he got that black mask from.

Yours, still trying not to blow tea out of my nose from laughing, in a proper teacherly mortified way of course,

Iruka.


	32. Chapter 32

Hey there Sweetie,

Yes I am in a good mood, mostly.

That's because I got a little bit of a break from watching over my sleeping beauty on his sickbed. Have I ever mentioned that Kakashi is _not_ a good patient? In fact he may just be the most ornery and difficult patient Fire Country has ever produced. He will _not_ stay in bed, at least not on his own, and dammit I've got _stuff_ to. He will _not _rest and give his body the time it needs to recover. He doesn't actually complain about the special protein enriched diet Tsunade put him on, but that doesn't mean he eats very much of it either.

So you can imagine how glad I was when Himora-san, sorry Shinzo came to see me yesterday. He was in town and stopped by to give me a copy of his latest book. Can you believe the man's energy? With everything he's been doing for me, and running his farm understaffed, and he still has time to publish another pig book. Phew!

He wrote a sweet dedication on the inside cover too. It said how much he's enjoyed working with me these past weeks, and that he wishes he could have a little piggy like me to help him all the time. You know that my name can mean sea pig as well as dolphin don't you? I know that it's a terrible pun, but kind of cute in its own way. Of course I told him again that I really don't think I have a future in farm management.

He winked and said he hadn't given up on me yet, and was just adding a little sketch of a piglet splashing through some waves when Kakashi, who'd somehow dragged himself out of bed, plonked himself down on the couch right between us and promptly passed out from the effort. I suppose we must have disturbed him with our chatting and laughing, but I refuse to feel too guilty. It was good having a few yuks with a friend.

Now I've been wanting to introduce Kakashi and Shinzo to each other for the longest time, I'm sure they'll get on famously. But somehow saying, "By the way the comatose form that just rather rudely shoved itself in the middle our conversation, is my better half," didn't seem… appropriate. So I just mumbled my apologies and explained that my friend had been injured on a recent mission, was still very weak and sleepy, and needed twenty four hour care.

Obviously there's nothing quite like an unconscious body to put a chill on a social visit, so I couldn't blame him for making his excuses and leaving. And I know that he's a very busy man.

It wasn't until he was leaving that it dawned on me just _how_ much his friendship and support have meant to me during this godawful time. I don't just mean his help with 'the book', but the fact that he was willing to make all those trips to Konoha for my sake, and then stay late into the night and share a drink with me when I was so lost and lonely. Now I'm sure that he'll get a fair cut from the sales of the book as my editor, but still, he went far beyond anything anyone could expect just to make it easier for me.

Well you know I've always been a little too… let's just say spontaneous, with my emotions. But as he was leaving I couldn't resist giving him a big friendly hug, just for being there when I really needed someone. I shocked myself actually, and half expected him to punch my lights out. But he didn't, he gave me a nice little squeeze back, and from the happy smile on his face I could tell that he understood how much I value him as a friend.

And as it turned out it was the only hug I was going to get. Kakashi was holding himself up in the doorway when I turned round.

I suppose I shouldn't have yelled at him for being such a moron and using up the little energy reserves he has to struggle all the way from the bedroom on his own. But he really isn't in any condition to entertain guests yet. Obviously. And I was doing perfectly well on my own.

Anyways, it just made him even more cross and irritable. He wouldn't let me help him get back to bed, so I followed three feet behind, ready to catch him if he fell, and of course that made him crosser still. Then he passed out again before we'd had a chance to make up and snuggle.

Oh well, as long as he's sleeping he's getting stronger and that's the only thing that counts. There'll be plenty of time for snuggles later.

Yours, happy to have my man within arms reach, even if he's not actually in my arms,

Iruka.


	33. Chapter 33

A/N I won't use the dreaded word filler... but let's call this a linker to get us to the next round of ridiculousness. More coming, sooner or later. Which it will be depends on fate. (cue pic of Neiji scowling as a flock of birds flies twittering overhead).

* * *

Dear Sweet Girl, 

A word to the wise my dear. Since I'm not particularly likely to ever have kids of my own, I'd like you to pass this on to yours. Never, but never, fall in love with a genius.

And what exactly was it that brought about this little titbit of insight you may well ask?

Well, I got home earlier than usual a couple of days ago to find Shikamaru-kun struggling to hold onto my supposedly bedridden partner, by the scruff of his shadow naturally, while said jounin was poised half in and half out of our open bedroom window. Apparently the lazy kid had roused himself from one of his daydreams in the nick of time to catch Kakashi making a break.

Now this is _not, _unfortunately, a particularly rare event. As I've already mentioned, keeping the slippery bastard in bed where he belongs would be a full time job for a squad of ANBU, no, make that two squads. Two part time chuunins are so far beyond outclassed that it isn't even a joke. However, on this particular occasion, just as we were forcing him back under the covers tucking him in nice and comfy and tying him fast to the bedframe, who should come strolling in cheerful as you please but… Kakashi?

Yes, Kakashi. WTF?

A quick dispel and a double take revealed that it was Ukki-kun, not Kakashi-kun that we had just wrestled off the windowsill and into bed.

So… Kakashi gave me a sweet disarming smile from under his mask, said that he'd been out stretching his legs for a bit, sat on the chair and proceeded to stretch out his long enticing legs as if he needed to emphasize his point. _Then_ he had the nerve to glance over at the bed where Ukki-kun was roped securely in place and spilling potting soil over the relatively clean sheets, quirk an eyebrow in that annoying way of his, and ask if there was anything going on between us that he should know about.

And that was when I lost it. Stretching his legs? He should be glad I didn't stretch his damned neck.

As if it wasn't bad enough letting a novice chuunin and former student know that I can't tell the difference between my lover and a potted plant!!! To imply that I was into doing kinky stuff with his aspidistra... Well Shikamaru was smart enough to notice the twitch in my eyebrow and high-tail it out of there. It's surprising I didn't rupture every blood vessel in my body. I certainly shook a bit of plaster off the ceiling.

And rattled the windows.

And made the neighbours, above below and on both sides, knock on the walls.

And then… once I'd stopped hyperventilating, I found myself tied up next to the blasted plant with Kakashi's lips plastered to mine as he kissed the hell out of me. Who could stay mad at the creep? As I said, bloody geniuses.

Well he apologized up and down and explained that he had snuck out because he was so bored that he was going out of his mind. So… in a flash of brilliance of my own, I suggested that if he has energy to waste on strolling around town and casting genjutsus, he should start helping out in the mission room, with Tsunade's approval natch. Heaven knows we're understaffed enough, and with him to pick up some slack it would free up Genma to take a few of the high ranked missions that are going begging for lack of available jounins.

Brilliant, right? Except… does the bloody genius have to be so bloody good at every bloody thing he does? Now I've been manning the mission room desk two or three evenings a week for how long? To be perfectly honest I was rather looking forward to being the expert for once. But no sooner had Kakashi's pert and perfect white bum met the desk chair than it became obvious that he was the best and most efficient paper shuffler the place had ever seen.

He accepted everyone's reports while fairly oozing charm and gratitude, had no problems deciphering even the worst handwriting, and excelled at reading between the lines as well as right through the mud and bloodstains. _And_ he reads like lightening when he wants to. He was processing two or three to every one of mine, so we had plenty of time to go through the mission requests and rank them too. Which he did at a glance… naturally.

Oh well, I suppose the moral is if you can't take the heat don't drag the hottest guy in Konoha into the kitchen with you. On the other hand the gentle but constant workload does seem to be building up his stamina remarkably well. Well enough to start thinking about… let's just say there's more than one way for me to come out on top. As I'm writing this I'm suddenly feeling anxious to get Kakashi back into bed and this time I'm pretty sure he'll be happy to stay there. Maybe we'll even have the neighbours rapping on the walls to shut us up again, it has been quite a while.

Yours, busy turning lemons into lemonade,

Iruka.


	34. Chapter 34

Above him the sky, its furthest bluest part

Dear Most Treasured Childhood Friend,

So um… could you put us up for a day or two, me and Kakashi that is? You see the thing is your neighbour Seito-kun has hired us for a mission! Yeah that's right, _the _Seito-kun whose been burying me under 'pig books' since I first met up with him over at your place about, oh, a lifetime ago. As you know there aren't any inns or hotels around there, and Kakashi is dead set against us staying with him at his pig farm, and I know that the fresh country air will do him good but I really really don't want Kakashi sleeping in a tree, not yet.

Damned if I know what it is between those two, I was so sure they'd actually _like_ each other when they finally got to meet.

Of course they have met up once or twice in passing, but never under what I'd call 'pleasant circumstances', and they've never had the chance to have a sit down and a cup of tea and a nice chat and to get to know each other properly. So anyways, when Himuro-san walked into the mission room late this afternoon, my first thought was that this was the perfect chance for them to do just that. Of course that was before I saw how upset Himuro-san was.

Which was nothing compared to how agitated he got when he noticed Kakashi sitting at the desk next to me.

Who not coincidentally had started bristling like a majorly pissed off cat even before the poor man was halfway through the door.

Well… between them they flooded the whole place with an aura so dark and deadly that it had lazybones Shikamaru out of his chair and running for cover in an instant. Kotetsu Izumo and Genma, who've witnessed enough mission room madness to be on a permanent hair trigger, henged into a desk ornament of the three wise monkeys, and even Gai-sensei had the self preservation instincts to hide behind a potted palm.

Weird.

Of course Kakashi's a jounin, and that's pretty much your baseline for weirdness right there. And I daresay there's more than a few folks out there who would consider anyone who devotes their entire lives to the study of pigdom to be at least a little bit out of the ordinary. So I suppose it goes without saying that their perspectives on… well just about everything, are going to be… different. But why that should make two intelligent, attractive and well brought up men positively loath each other at first sight is quite beyond me.

Anyways, all things considered, I have to agree that the two of them staying under the same roof doesn't seem like a very good idea at all. So could you? Would you?

The mission shouldn't take very long. Poor Seito was bawling his eyes out trying to give us the details, though Kakashi glaring at him the whole time with all the empathy of Dr. Death certainly didn't help. It seems someone called Lucille has gone missing, which is particularly bad because she's pregnant. You wouldn't know her would you? Is she Seito's girlfriend? He seems pretty much convinced that she's been kidnapped or something. Oh well I'm sure we'll get to the bottom of it soon enough, afterall that's our mission, right?

We'll be as silent as ninja's if you want us too, and we won't take up much space. Of course I was originally supposed to have gone solo, Kakashi isn't officially taking field missions yet. But he scrawled his name next to mine on the acceptance form in thick black marker and with such an air of defiance that I couldn't ask him stay at home on his own. Honestly he can be so cute when he doesn't want to be, it takes more than coming back from the dead to keep my man down. And a nice little stress-free missing person retrieval like this is the perfect chance for him to get his feet back under him.

We won't be moving very fast since we'll have Himuro-san along with us, so send your reply back with the bird bringing you this.

Yours, all hyped up to get into 'mission mode' with my darling,

Iruka.


End file.
